Complicated Vows: This is War
by NobodysChick
Summary: When the Decepticons bring war to her city, Daniel is thrown into the mix, eventually falling for Bumblebee. But her truck, that doesnt remember that it's a Cybertronian, has always felt like her protector. Now, the race, and war, is on for Daniels heart.
1. Discovery

Danielle yawned and stretched on her back as she slowly rose back into consciousness after a long night of good sleep. Pushing back the covers, she swung her legs over the side of her bed and shuffled over to her mirror. Her long brown hair, that after her twenty years of life reached just past her hips, was tangled, looking like birds had tried to make it into their nest during the night. Her hazel eyes shone with new-morning light, the muted sunrays dancing on the gold flecks in her irises.

The morning filtered through her dingy baby-blue curtains, the soft beams seeming to ignite the thick floating dust in the room. After successfully managing to tame her hair into one long braid, she walked over to her window and stared out, looking out at her baby; the bright blue Ford Raptor SVT sat in the gravel driveway, covered in dirt and morning dew.

"You sure do need a bath, don't you big boy?" Danielle whispered with a small grin. Washing the giant truck was a challenging all-day endeavor, but one that she thoroughly enjoyed taking on. Even if she resided in a grubby shack out in the boonies, her pride and joy sat out front, faithfully waiting for her every morning. Some people would say that it was just a truck, something that should have been allowed to be scrapped, but there was just something about the Raptor that held her heart in its bed.

Glancing at her clock, 8:13 AM, she threw on a white tank top, tan baggies, and black knockoff combat boots. To say she was a tomboy was an understatement but she didn't care. She was comfortable and didn't mind the slightly military air that it gave her. It also made her look stronger than she really was.

She headed for the kitchen to grab some breakfast and her keys then headed outside. She didn't have time to wash the Raptor today, but gave him a silent vow to wash and wax him fully tomorrow first thing.

Walking up to the vehicle, she ran her fingertips lightly over the metal, from the headlights to the hood to the grill, rubbing off the layer of grime on the grill emblem, an odd face that almost resembled a robotic cat of some sort. Sighing at the dirt on her fingertips, she wiped them off on her pants and then unlocked the truck. Hopping into the cab, she backed out of the driveway onto the "main road", the track of dirt cutting through the dense trees that was a sorry excuse for a roadway. As she headed out, she looked into the rearview mirror and was momentarily distracted by the yellow dust cloud rising into the wispy, gray morning fog behind her. She let her mind slip and allowed herself to daydream of how life used to be, back when she still lived with her parents.

Everything was ok back then; she didn't have to worry about bills or getting food or protecting herself. Everything was provided for, and she hardly had to even lift a finger. The happy memories darkened, however, burned away at the edges by the hell that had become the main, and only, reason that she had left. For that one reason alone, she would never go back, no matter what happened to her these days.

All of a sudden, the engine sputtered, vibrating the cab and bringing her attention back to driving. In front of her, partly shrouded by the drapery of the fog, a large buck stood in the middle of the road, frozen in fear as the hulking noisy truck hurtled towards it.

Danielle slammed on the brakes, but one of the tires caught in a pothole, sending the truck skidding sidewise. Trying to regain control of the vehicle, Danielle jerked the steering wheel back towards the road, but the over-correction was a mistake; one that put her in direct path of one of the sentinel pines lining the road. Going from 45 miles per hour to an absolute stop in less than 25 feet was impossible and she knew it. Yelling out, she shut her eyes, bracing herself against the now-locked-up steering wheel, waiting for the head-on collision.

As she ran off the road, she could hear all the twigs and leaves of the shrubbery slamming and flicking against the cab and underside of the truck, warning her of the path she was on: the impending obliteration of the front end of the vehicle, the whining and snapping of metal as the truck wrapped itself around the tree trunk, slamming her into the steering wheel and then the windshield, glass shattering all around, the engine being rammed backwards into the cab, solid steel pinning her legs to the seat, fire eating through her veins, coursing pain and agony.

But it never happened.

The truck rolled forward through more thick weeds and brambles, violently coming to a halt and throwing Danielle forward against her seatbelt.

As the dust and her heart rate began to settle some, she slowly opened her eyes. Gazing around, she saw the massive pine no more than a foot from the passenger side door and a thick sable palm just a few feet in front of her. She remembered to breathe as she hugged the steering wheel, letting out a slow halting breath. The engine shuddered, emitting a haggard cough out of the dual-exhaust pipes in the back.

After several minutes passed, she finally sat back up, having collected her nerves. She gave the dashboard a final pat and backed out onto the road once more. "You are _definitely_ getting a full wash, wax, and detailing tomorrow baby."

While driving to town, she remembered what her father had told her countless times when she had first started driving; "If yer gonna' hit a deer, speed up! Smaller, an' fewer, dents, especially when ya' compare hittin' a deer to hittin' a tree..." She chuckled remembering her old man, missing him, but reminding herself sternly to focus on the road ahead.

Twenty minutes later, Danielle was finally in the city. Pulling into the local Food Lion, she quickly and quietly procured the items she needed and made her way to the checkout line. While a nearly-senile old lady in front of her argued with the cashier about some coupons, Danielle lazily scanned over the covers of magazines lined up above the conveyor belt.

One had a big white cake on the front, with dozens of brightly colored, and supposedly edible, flowers, beads, and various garnishments; another had a "Before-and-After" shot of some famous women who'd "lost 40 pounds in just 3 weeks". Others held the headlines of who broke up with who, who died, who witnessed the giant machines destroying Los Angles, who's birthday it was… One title, and picture, finally captured her full attention. On the cover of _Times_ was the "Machines vs. City" headline, with a candid shot of a giant mechanical beast firing what looked like a cannon at another giant mechanical beast.

"Next… Next… Ma'am, are you going to check out or not?" came the perturbed cashiers' voice, breaking into Danielle's curious trance.

Figuring the _Times'_ article to just be a spoof, or a very expensive advertisement for a new movie, she left the magazine on its shelf and continued on with her checkout.

After walking out of the store and then loading up her stuff, she put the key in the ignition and turned it, but the engine wouldn't start. It would not even whine or protest, just silence.

"Must've shaken the battery lose or something when I ran off the road…" she muttered to herself, popping the hood and checking the lines and wires. Everything seemed intact, but she jiggled the wires connected to the battery and all of the spark plugs anyways. Reaching back into the cab, she turned the key again, silently willing it to start, but to no avail. Walking back to the open hood, she leaned on the grill, pondering what else would keep it from starting.

"There must be some dirt blocking a contact point somewhere… This is what you get for putting off cleaning him for so long…" she growled at herself.

A soft blue-green light behind the engine caught her eye. It was directly in front of where the radio was in the dash. It blinked on and off irregularly, changing intensity every time it came back on. Not thinking it would do any good but not really knowing what else to try, she climbed back into the cab and tried to turn on the radio. Static burst out of the speakers, startling Danielle and making her jump nearly out of her skin.

"Now why in the good Lord's name does the radio start but not the engine…? It runs off the same battery… Why won't-" she stopped talking as she heard strange raspy voices filtering through the static, occasionally interrupted by clicks and whirs. It clearly wasn't English, but whoever was talking sounded infuriated, panicked, or directive like a drill sergeant. As several minutes passed, the static died back slowly and the voices became clearer. They didn't sound human, more like odd computers communicating with each other. There was a sudden overwhelming explosion heard through the truck's speakers, making the woofer in the back vibrate so hard it sounded as if it would break. The voices had stopped.

Danielle felt the ground shake before she heard the same explosion as what had just come through the radio. As the shockwave blew back small trees and whipped off leaves, Danielle yelped and covered her head with her arms. She didn't know what was going on but she knew that she had to get out of there, and FAST!

She tried the ignition again and nothing happened. She stomped the accelerator several times in frustration and tried again. The engine whined again and again as she repeatedly tried the ignition. Finally, the starter flipped over and the engine roared to life, coughing out white smoke from the exhaust pipes. After slamming down the hood, Danielle fled the packed parking lot, tempted to completely ignore the stop light and oncoming traffic. Before she could move, she saw a bright red Ferrari speed through the busy intersection, cutting off other cars as it went. As the light turned yellow, a giant blue Semi with red flames and no trailer gunned through, followed by a yellow medical vehicle and a huge, bellowing black GMC Topkick. The on-coming traffic's light turned red, and Danielle floored it.

"If those guys were running out of the city THAT FAST, I sure as hell am NOT sticking around to see WHY." she said to herself, ignoring the irate horns of other drivers. She managed to catch up to the Topkick and gawked at its size. Even though her Raptor was no tinker toy, the black truck seemed to loom in front of her. Curiosity nabbed her thoughts, leaving her yearning to know who was driving. Pushing her coughing truck for more speed than it had ever reached, she managed to sidle up next to the driver's-side door. She looked in and, to her shock and horror, the vehicle looked completely unmanned.

"No… I'm going crazy… wait, no I'm not... they must just be too short to be seen, or the seat is leaned back and… and…. HOLY SH-!" Having glanced down at the speedometer, she realized she was doing 115 miles per hour and rising! Immediately pulling her foot off the accelerator and pressing the brake, she watched with an open mouth as the Topkick, Semi truck, and medical truck all vanished rather quickly out of sight.

The strange group of vehicles quickly vanished out of sight in front of Danielle. The large plumb of smoke from the heart of city, however, did not. Even after she finally arrived home, a thin grey cloud was still visible above the tree-line.

With all the stress of the city explosion and no news of it anywhere on tv, the tired young woman decided to try to relax and not think about it. A hot shower and a Snickers bar later, Danielle was passed out on her couch, having gone through two huge adrenaline rushes in one very confusing day.

The sun was nearly set, bathing the unlit room in a fantasy-blue. The TV flickered silently in the corner as Danielle dozed. Her fingers twitched slightly as a dream flooded her unconscious mind.

_Dragon flies danced in the air of a bright cloudless noon. Danielle was playing in mother's flower garden, pulling up weeds and the occasional worm. Giggling contentedly, she got up and skipped around the yard, dancing with the dragon flies, twirling in her favorite yellow dress, now dusty with hand prints and fertilizer. _

_ A friendly honk brought her out of her giddy ballet with the fireless-dragons that buzzed around her. She turned to the origins of the sound and squealed happily as her father pulled up in his big blue truck with her best friend, Jeramie Haughnt, wiggling in the passenger seat, eager to jump out. Finally free and on the ground, he ran up to Danielle and gave her shoulder a slight nudge with his palm yelling "Tag! You're it!" "Hey, no fair!" Danielle pouted back, but swiftly gave chase. The air was filled with the giggling and shouting of the happy children running around the yard._

_ The squealing of tires shattered the atmosphere and she fell to the ground covering her ears. The truck, though empty, was spinning its back wheels, smoking on the grass. As the thick white smoke from the tires enveloped the yard, everything cracked like struck clay then imploded, everything disappearing into itself. Everything, except for Danielle and the truck. The furiously spinning wheels finally gained traction and the truck raced toward her, but the squealing didn't stop. She screamed as the grill slammed into her head in slow motion; she saw straight back into the engine, which was growling and raging with fire. The fire leapt towards her face, hungry to enter her mind, entwining itself in her hair. Two pipes shot out of the engine, through the grill and straight towards her eyes. Time slowed down even further as the squealing sound increased, the only thing she could hear above her silent screams._

Danielle woke with the scream in her throat, covering her eyes. She bolted upright and grabbed a close-by pillow, burying her face in it, still trying to protect her eyes from the demonic engine. Several minutes passed before the last wisps of the dream wore off, letting go of Danielle's mind and returning her sanity to her.

Sighing, she angrily threw the pillow down on the floor in self-disgust for letting the dream get to her like that, especially for making her scream like a wimpy little girl. Wiping her arms and hands on her shirt to get rid of the sheen of sweat that had broken out, she walked to the front window and gazed out at the setting dusk. A single lamp stood outside, bugs darting around in the glow.

The light didn't only show the bugs though. A dense white smoke, exactly like the one from her dream, slowly drifted by in the street, weaving through the trees and snaking along the ground and overhead power lines. Stepping outside, she walked along her driveway, eyeing her truck as she passed it, mentally kicking herself for being so immature as to think that the truck might actually come alive and attack her.

Reaching the road, she looked around to find the source of the smoke. She really didn't have any neighbors, at least not for a mile or so in either direction. The smoke was traveling from her left to the right so she peered down the left of the road. Her eyes finally spotted a glimmer of yellow and polished silver dully glinting in the lamp light a good distance away. She walked down the road to find a badly beaten up yellow Camaro with black racing stripes dumped on the side of the road. The windshield was cracked in the corner, the hood looked like a cow had been break-dancing on it; the sides of the car had gouges and burns in the paint. Her heart tore at the ghastly sight of the once-glorious hotrod. It broke when she saw a silver sports car behind the Camaro, in similar condition. Looking at the road, she spotted ugly tire marks and dirt gouges where the cars must have skid to a stop, probably a noise that could have entered her dream and awoken her.

Walking to the Camaro's driver's side window, she cautiously peered in, not knowing what to expect. To her slight amazement, yet full understanding, the keys sat on the seat, and she found the door to be unlocked. Checking the silver car, which turned out to be the remnants of a Pontiac Solstice, she found the same thing.

"Finders keepers dude. You can't leave cars sitting out here like this, with the keys to boot, and expect to find them when you come back. Though I don't know why anyone would even come back for either of these… They may not even be salvageable…"

Leaning into the Camaro's cab, she tried the ignition. She wasn't surprised when it didn't start, but she was surprised when the radio came on. Softly at first, then it grew a little louder.

"Now and again we try  
>To just stay alive.<br>Maybe we'll turn it around  
>'Cause it's not too late,<br>It's never too late.."

As the radio cracked and popped into nothing but static, something fierce inside Danielle snapped. She felt compelled, almost obligated, to at least try and save the two cars. She willed the gears of the Camaro to shift into neutral and they did, but only after immense effort. She pushed the car down the road, pausing every so often to catch her breath as the brakes seemed half locked. It didn't help that the car wobbled from side to side, possibly just bad misalignment of tires or, hopefully not, bent axles. She wondered how a car could get this damaged in the city or out on these roads. Nothing short of a monster-truck rally could have caused this much damage. She also wondered how she was supposed to make the sharp turn into her driveway while still pushing the car forward. It wasn't until the car refused to move anymore when she realized, to her astonishment, that she'd made it to her shabby garage door.

The sun had long set by now, but she quickly pulled the door open and pushed the car in. Turning on her workshop lamps and opening up a tool box, she didn't know where to start with the car. Exhausted and slightly exasperated, she fought with the car's door to open it and then half-sat, half-collapsed into the driver's seat. She rested her head back against the seat and shut her eyes, still trying to catch her breath. The leather seat seemed to depress and conform to her body, slowly reclining, inch by inch. It felt as if she was in the arms of a strong, yet nearly defeated, man who was clinging to her like she was the spark of life itself.

The radio popped softly, a moment of static, then with an almost forlorn whine, the radio quieted. Danielle fell asleep in the front seat, lights blazing around her. No trucks haunted her dreams this time, but an angry black smoke drifted at the outer fringes of her mind, threatening to choke it, but keeping its distance nonetheless. At one point, two red orbs, seemingly eyes, glared out of the smoke but disappeared without a blink.

When Danielle woke up the next morning, she went for the silver Pontiac but only found a wide deep hole in the ground, scorched black and in some parts still smoldering. The surrounding area was hung thick with the black fog, rising slowly and dissipating into the dreary morning sky.


	2. Rise of Conflict

Saddened by the unexplained loss of the Solstice, and bothered by the deep gouge in the earth where the car _had _been, Danielle shuffled down the road, heading back home. Despite the loss of the beautiful sports car, she was glad to have at least saved the Camaro and now eager to get to work on it.

Her body had other plans though, her stomach cursing her in its own gurgley language for not having fed it yet. She sighed but decided she'd need all her strength if she hoped to bang any of the huge dents out of the nearly totaled car.

"Fine, I'm going, I'm going… stop yelling at me…" she growled at her stomach, as it growled right back at her.

* * *

><p>"How did you manage to lose Bumblebee AND Jazz?" Ratchet boomed at Ironhide. "The kid is BRIGHT YELLOW for sparks' sake! And Jazz? He never shuts up, much less blend in! How did you LOSE them? They were right behind you!"<p>

Ironhide merely crossed his arms over his chest plates and huffed, quickly losing his tight control of his short temper; one of his metal fist starting to shift into a blaster. "Like you just said, they were _behind_ me. The last I saw of them was when we started run- I mean retreating…" correcting himself as Optimus gave him a treacherous glance.

Mirage simply sat on the side, buffing out paint scratches, trying not to draw attention that would draw him into the argument. He missed his comrades, was concerned about where they were, but was not going to draw his blasters out like Ironhide was doing now to defend himself against verbal attacks by Ratchet and Optimus.

"Ironhide, fighting us won't bring our comrades home. Put the cannon away before you do something you'll regret, or force us to do something we'll regret." Optimus said evenly. He knew that, behind Ironhide's steely demeanor, he still cared for the missing Bots. Optimus placed his servo cautiously on Ironhide's cannon. "'Hide, put it away. Don't let your anger override your circuits, save that for the Decepticons."

Ironhide grimaced and his cannon flared with heat, wanting to blast some Decepticon aft. A stern look from Optimus, which Ironhide knew was his final warning, at last made him put away his cannon and transform it back into his arm and servo.

Mirage had quietly looked on before sneaking out of the room, tired of the heated atmosphere, and fully just not wanting to deal with this situation. He transformed and rolled out of the base onto the dirt road, wanting to drive away as fast as possible. After a few bumps and dips in the road though, and the dust rising in the air, he decided against it, not wanting to mess up his shiny paint.

* * *

><p>Danielle stood in her garage, attempting to asses the full damage done to the Camaro. Staring at the car made her heart wrench. She'd always had good taste in vehicles and loved to work on them, figure out how they ran, like a giant gasoline-injected rubix cube. After breakfast, she had taken some old rags, soap, and water to clean the metal of all the debris and dirt. She took her time, careful not to get cut on any of the sharp edges jutting out.<p>

Once the car was clean, she was allowed to see the full extent of the damage, which wasn't as bad as it had seemed last night. It was still going to take tons of blood, sweat, and elbow grease to bring the vehicle back to its prime.

Several unsuccessful attempts to take the individual body pieces off the frame lead Danielle to believe that this may truly be a worthless cause. Last night's gung-ho attitude to fix the car may have resulted from a mixture of exhaustion, shock, and a sugar rush after the candy bar; it probably hadn't been the full "divine change of heart" she'd thought she'd experienced.

"Who was I kidding…?" she sighed, kneeling down and resting her forehead on the crumpled hood. "I'm not a mechanic, much less a magician… I don't have the right tools, or all of the right knowledge on how to fix this… this sorry metal trap _thing_." She practically spat the last word, slamming her fist against the hood, slicing the side of her hand on a jagged edge. She didn't realize she had been cut until she finally looked up at the windshield, halfway hoping to find some sort of answers there on the cracked glass. Long smears of bright crimson soiled the yellow plane, throwing her into a fit to clean it off before it dried.

Wrapping her hand in the same rag she'd just cleaned the hood with, she walked to the bathroom and pulled out one of the bottles of rubbing alcohol to clean the wound with. As she knew to expect, she didn't feel the pain, only a dull pressure inside of her hand. With the wound clean, just as with the car, she was able to see the full extent of the damage. The cut was deep, and she was surprised that she didn't see bone. Shrugging, she taped the skin closed, with gauze on top of the wound, and covered her hand with an ace bandage.

Angry at herself for being so careless, she glared into the mirror, wishing she could slap the klutzy girl she saw glaring right back into her green-brown eyes.

* * *

><p>Sitting in the femme's garage, Bumblebee felt alone and useless, as well as disheartened. The girl had rested her head on me, and I had wished I could reach out and hold her, tell her everything would be ok. "Who am I kidding…? I can't fix this… this sorry metal trap <em>thing<em>." The last of her words made Bee cringe inwardly; she called him a "thing" like some useless piece of scrap, a worthless trinket that was a blemish to his race. He shrank back an inch or two from the organic when she'd hit his hood. He thought she might have felt him move, as she looked up, but he wasn't sure. It didn't matter though, as she quickly got up and left to mend her injured hand.

He wanted to contact Optimus, to send him his location or, at the very least, tell him that he was online, but his radio had glitched and offlined for the most part. He could no longer send outgoing calls with the COM link's long range; he needed some sort of short range radio wave transmitter to communicate with his leader and comrades.

He desperately needed Ratchet's help, for the organic did not possess the right kind of tools to heal his armor. At least she had cleaned him; no longer did the dust clog his fans and stick to his sides. Even if she hadn't cleaned him, he was just grateful that she had found him and Jazz.

_ Poor Jazz_… Bee thought. Not long after the organic had rescued and sheltered him, he heard Starscream's engines flying low and slow overhead. Bee had closed his door so that the girl would not hear what he knew would come next. He'd tensed as the ground vibrated a split second before the huge explosion was heard, shaking the structure around him. He knew Starscream had fired a missile and offlined Jazz right where he sat, weak and defenseless. The dishonorable, dirty, piece of slag... The poor Bot probably never knew what hit him…

Ratchet sat in the medical bay, his quiet area, trying to come up with a battle plan. They didn't know where Bumblebee and Jazz were, if they were even still together. They hadn't the slightest clue as to what condition their systems were in, a thought which gnawed on Ratchet's processor. As the head medic, it was his duty, and his alone, to keep the unit healthy and online. If he couldn't perform that task, then he felt he was simply a worthless piece of scrap metal.

Sitting in his own quarters, Mirage didn't know what to do with himself. He fiddled with his rims, trying to think of what to do, or say, to the other Autobots to soothe them somehow.

"How do you expect to appease a Prime when you can't even relax yourself?" he whispered indignantly to himself. "You know what happened… And if you try to say anything at all, Optimus will surely pick up on it, he knows when any Bot is hiding something. One scan by him is all it'll take..."

Optimus Prime and Ironhide sat in the common room thinking to themselves about what to do. Ironhide just wanted to blow up the city until Bumblebee and Jazz were found. Optimus was worried about sending out his unit to a Decepticon trap. He couldn't decide what was worst: sitting by to protect the unit or going out to save the other two and risk everyone.

* * *

><p>Staring at the crippled Camaro, Danielle felt her heartstrings tug. She wanted so badly to fix it but hadn't the tools nor the skills to properly bring the car back to functionality. Instead of focusing on the negative, she decided to clean the Raptor, as her poor baby was in need of a thorough cleaning and much maintenance.<p>

The garden hose didn't reach out to the truck so she ran inside to grab the keys and pull it forward. She managed to get the engine to stop coughing and wheezing long enough to idle it up to the makeshift washing station, complete with water bucket, soap, sponge, and towel.

Danielle pressed the brake to stop perfectly where she wanted to be but the brakes wouldn't catch, and the truck continued slowly forward. She slammed down on the brake but still the truck crawled forward. In a last ditch effort, even though she knew it was bad for the gears, she threw it into park, jouncing the vehicle forward and back at the crude stop. The truck seemed to protest with a loud rev of the engine.

Disturbed by the vehicles seeming mind of its own, she tried to turn the key to remove it from the ignition but it wouldn't budge. The harder she pulled, the louder the engine revved, and the more white smoke emptied from the tail pipes.

Scared out of her mind, Danielle reached for the door handle to leap out, her mind recalling the serpentine flames and stabbing pipes from her dream. The locks closed and it was then that Danielle knew she was done. The truck was going to kill her! HER truck! Her TRUCK! It was supposed to be an inanimate object but that theory was proving to be very wrong at the moment!

The grinding of gears caught her attention as the truck moved forward again, slowly crossing the few remaining feet between it and the Camaro. Danielle stomped on the brake, yanked on the stick shift, clawed at the door locks, and tried to twist the key. Nothing worked. She could only watch as the truck crept agonizingly slow towards the car. She expected flames to burst forth from under the hood on contact with the other vehicle, for everything to be consumed and burn to the ground.

She could no longer see the Camaro's tail lights and then there was a bump, a metallic hit that announced contact of the two vehicles; but nothing happened. The truck idled there, coughing, for several moments. Dual beams of thin light illuminated the garage; the headlights of the Camaro had turned on, even though Danielle could clearly see the keys to the car sitting on the tool chest, right where she'd left them.

The truck's engine coughed once more before the radio flickered to life. The static grew then softened, ebbing away as soft mechanical, almost computerized whirs and clicks sounded through the speakers. The scanning of radio stations was obvious and the radio finally landed on one.

_ "With your mind you have ability to form  
><em>_And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm"_

The station flipped again to a Pastors deep voice proclaiming _"I must reach out! I will cry out to the one that holds me, protects me! If I can find Him, He will find me_!"

The radio went quiet, save for weak white noise buzzing in the background.

Danielle didn't know what to make of the eerie coincidence of the two stations playing back to back those particular segments. Feeling delusional but not seeing much of any other choice, she spoke aloud to nothing in particular, "I… I don't…" She took a deep breath and "I don't understand. Are you… trying to… _talk… _to _me?_" Moments passed and she wanted to slam her head into the window for ever thinking that her truck could talk to her. Then its antenna started to move. Not just move, but weave back and forth, like a growing vine in a time-lapse movie. The antenna "grew" straight up to the roof and perched there.

The radio then burst forth with all sorts of whirs and clicks and beeps. If she hadn't known better, she would have thought it was a computer deciphering, or creating, a code to send through to another computer. Then the sounds changed. From clicks and whirs to what seemed like syllables. The tone was almost low and halting, but sped up when another, much deeper tone entered over the sound waves. The two tones took turns playing, and Danielle felt almost as if the two were conversing.

"But why would a car talk to a truck? Wait… Why would the car OR the truck TALK?" Danielle buried her face in hands, shaking her head back and forth. She didn't understand what was going on but she didn't like it one bit.

The tones fell in and out, taking turns, when they all of a sudden just fell silent. The antenna folded back on itself, retracting back into what Ford had originally designed it to be. To her amazement, the truck finally turned off and the locks popped open. Her common sense told her to jump out and run for her life, but something, something quite irrational, made her want to stay.

Tracing the steering wheel with her thumb, she mulled over what she should do. _My truck has developed a mind of its own apparently. It tapped another car and made it turn on, then it seemed to try to talk to me… What was it even trying to say?_ "With your mind you have ability to form, And transmit thought energy far beyond the norm." _ What did that mean? Like… telepathy? And_ _"_Reaching out…to the one that protects me… If I find Him, He will find me"?

_ "_Are you searching for someone?"She asked the Raptor as she traced the leather lines of the arm rest.

The battered Camaro let out a whimpering honk from its horn and flashed its lights several times. Danielle looked at the yellow car sideways, trying to put two and two together. "If that was a yes… Are you answering for yourself or the truck?" she asked cautiously, still wanting to slap herself for actually _talking_ to a car.

The Camaro honked again and Danielle decided to get out of the truck. Curiosity may have killed the cat, but not before it took his sanity first. She walked over to the car and sat down next to the driver's side door, not wanting to be in front of it in case it, too, decided to not have properly functioning brakes…

"Ok so… you're a car…" she began slowly. "A very damaged car that could simply be malfunctioning with very well timed circuitry attacks… Or this could be real… and you can actually understand me and are trying to communicate…" The Camaro honked and flashed its lights once again. Covering her ears in the echoing garage "Well, how 'bout this. I'll ask a question and you answer 'yes' just by flashing your lights, sound good? Because your horn is very loud…" The headlights flashed.

It felt horrible for Bumblebee to not be able to tell her everything. He wanted so badly to explain that her processor wasn't glitching, her systems weren't deceiving her. However, he was stuck in this crumpled mode; I had tried to transform but the pain was incredible just to move an axle. But at least she was aware of me now. Taking a deep breath in, and exhaling slowly, the organic seemed to settle some as she started her line of questions.

"So, I don't really know where to start. Um… so you understand me? You understand English?" He flashed twice. "Can't you speak then?" He sat still, hoping she'd catch on that no lights meant "no". Several moments passed and she realized that was a negative.

"Why can't you speak? Er… yea… I guess you can't explain if you can't speak… Well, are you man made?" He chuckled at that, making the car frame shudder slightly. The organic became tense and alert, unsure if what she thought she saw actually just happened or not. "Did you just… shake?" He flashed his lights, still chuckling internally.

"Ok… I am so confused… Well, what was that other car I found with you last night? Was it like you?" Jazz's memory saddened me, and he dimly lit his headlights, but enough for her to see.

"Oh…" She seemed to be internally processing something that made her feel sorrow also. Did she somehow know that he had been offlined? She gave a small shake of her head before continuing.

"So, were you talking to my truck earlier? No? Ok… Were you talking to someone else like you? Oh? Are they near here? Are they _coming_ here?" Her eyes grew larger as she looked at him sideways, wary of his response. He flashed his lights many times and the organic scooted back against the wall behind her and pulled her knees to her chest.

"Are they going to harm me for keeping you here? Are you sure? How? Do they have guns or weapons of some kind? WHAT? So how do you know they won't hurt me?" Bee scorned himself for having to always be honest. The little organic may have a spark attack soon with all the information she was obtaining. He didn't want to harm her but he didn't want her to run away either, for fear of the Decepticons somehow learning of her contact with him.

"What I am supposed to do…? I don't know what I'm dealing with here. How do I even know if the car is being honest?" she rested her head on her knees and sighed. "How am I supposed to defend myself against a CAR?"

Oh, how he yearned to tell her that he was an Autobot, a "good guy" as her kind would say, he and his comrades. Before he could even process it, the femme was up and running for a door that lead further into her shelter.

Danielle rushed inside as a sudden thought hit her square in the face. She didn't have to be completely defenseless, she had a gun. And not just _any_ gun: a Fabrique Nationale 5.7 handgun (FN 5.7). Her father had purchased it when it was cheap off the streets, just as the local gang rising had started. Luckily, he'd never had to use it, but the weapon was known nationwide as the "Cop Killer", being able to pierce through 48 layers of "bullet-proof" Kevlar.

Holding the heavy weapon in her hands made her feel like she had just that much more control over her situation. If the other vehicle(s?) wanted to harm her, she was not going down without scratching some paint and popping some tires first.

Having finished loading the magazine and packing an extra in her pocket, she headed back towards the garage. As she crossed her living room, a glint of steel out the window caught her eye. A cherry red Ferrari sat next to her truck. Pulling into her driveway was the hulking black Topkick, following in the blue Petersbilt and medical vehicle.

Danielle turned off the gun's safety, put it into a double-handed grip with the muzzle down, and headed for the door leading to the garage.


	3. Down Time

Setting her jaw, fingers itching around the F.N. 5.7, Danielle stepped back out into her garage, hardly breathing as she took in the sight of the large gleaming vehicles. The blue semi caught her gaze more than the others, seeming to radiate a presence that she couldn't quite put a word to. Whatever it was, though, it deeply unsettled her. What was worse, she noticed that all of the drivers had exited their vehicles and were now probably skulking around her yard.

The shining red Ferrari stole Danielle's attention next. The paint job was flawless, the detailing, immaculate. The car looked like it belonged in a showroom, not in front of her garage, way out here on dirt roads.

She crept towards the car, gazing at the fine specimen of speed and performance, but still alert for any signs that would inform of an incoming attack by one of the missing drivers.

Finally out of her garage, she scoped out her yard but found nothing. She stepped around the side of the Ferrari, expecting to be jumped by someone, but realized that the yard was completely empty except for the vehicles.

The sight of the black Topkick threw back her memory to when she saw it gunning down the road with seemingly no driver. She thought of how the Camaro had flashed its lights and played its radio while empty and off. It hadn't been kidding about how others like it were coming here.

"What are you? What do you want?" she practically yelled at the unresponsive vehicles in front of her. "If you're here for the Camaro, just take it." Panic crept into her voice, rising by the second. "I'm sorry that I took it. I didn't think anybody wanted it anymore by the way it was left on the side of the road! I'm really sorry! I didn't know! I really didn't know!" She hadn't realized how high her voice had gotten, but she almost didn't care anymore. "Please, just don't hurt me! I won't cause any problems, I promise. I'm just trying to get by on what I have, I didn't mean to make any problems. Please, believe me…"

A deep baritone voice filled the air around her. "Relax, we are not going to harm you, young human. If anything, we are grateful that you saved our comrade."

Even though the immense voice seemed to come from nowhere and was off-putting, to say the least, what happened next completely threw Danielle over the edge.

The semi began to change. The body of the truck and the frame pushed apart at the seams, individual pieces began to shift and move all around. She couldn't believe her eyes as the truck, well… stood up!

Despite the voice's earlier statement of peace and gratitude, Danielle pulled up the gun and fired round after round at the giant machine. When the sight clicked with the image on the cover of the _Times_ magazine, the one of the giant machines destroying the city, she fired at all the vehicles.

"Why you little…" came a gruff dark voice as the Topkick changed and stood next to the semi. "You want a gun fight? Let's go, fleshing."

The black machine's arm shot forward as it turned into a glowing hot cannon. Relying on what she'd learned from the movies, her only idea was to fire rounds into the mouth of the cannon itself.

She knew she'd hit home when the machine grunted and shook its arm, er.. cannon... She also knew she hadn't damaged it enough though; she seemed to have only pissed it off more. Staring down the barrel of the cannon that was aimed right at her, again, Danielle froze. She didn't even notice that the Ferrari and medical vehicle had also changed shape and were now standing around her yard watching.

"Ironhide, at ease! You'll give her a spark attack! She's already on the edge of shock!" the medical vehicle demanded.

This was all too much… Her head began to swim in fear for her life. She fired aimlessly at the giants, emptying the magazine until the chamber only clicked when she pulled the trigger. Spots swam in front of her eyes in anger at the gun for emptying when she needed it most. She reached for the spare magazine…

That was all she remembered.

* * *

><p>The femme was firing wildly at them, bullets glancing off their armor and sparking as they hit. Ratchet's scans showed that the human's systems were all operating at too high of a level, putting a huge load on her body. He knew she couldn't function much longer at this level of exertion, but he didn't expect her to collapse onto the ground unconscious.<p>

"'Bout fraggin' time!" Ironhide snarled.

Mirage looked frantic as he inspected himself. "Oh no no no! My paint! It's been'a scratched!" He started to curse quietly in a mix of Italian and Cybertronian.

Optimus held his head in his servo, unnerved by the organic's reaction to them. He always expected a degree of shock and fear when most humans witnessed them for the first time. However, he never expected a young human femme to own, and USE, such heavy artillery on them when she was not even in the government's military.

"Ratchet, will she be ok?" Optimus asked.

"I believe so. Scans show that she has fallen into stasis from stress. And shock… There should be no permanent damage to any of her systems. My concern now is Bumblebee. The kid hasn't moved or made a sound since we arrived."

Walking over to the battered yellow car, he scanned him and found a spark reading, but it was only at half the level that it should be at. This worried Ratchet. He was also worried by the absence of Jazz. No radio signals or energon trace of any kind were perceptible of the Bot.

Placing his servo under the Camaro, he gently pulled the car out of the garage.

"You cannot transform, can you?" he asked. Bumblebee's whirs and clicks sounded over Ratchet's COM link, surprising him but nonetheless confirming his dread.

"Is Jazz near here? Is he ok?" Bee responded in slow, sad sounds, informing him of Starscream's brutal murdering of their comrade the previous night.

Ratchet relayed Bumblebee's report to the rest of the Autobot's, watching as they shook their heads, his own spark aching at the loss of their friend.

"We cannot mourn his loss here," Optimus broke the heavy atmosphere. "It is not safe to be out in the open. We must get Bumblebee back to base for medical treatment.

"What about the girl, sir?" Ratchet asked.

"You said she should be ok. We cannot help her much, and I wish not to bring any more humans into our war. She had a close call with Starscream's attack just a few meters from here. She was lucky to not have been seen."

Bumblebee whirred in protest. He didn't want to leave the broken femme out here on her own. Despite her harsh words, he'd grown somewhat attached to her for rescuing him off the road, cleaning him up, and attempting to repair him.

"No, we can't bring her. We have no justifiable reason to. She will be fine, right Ratchet?" He nodded his head. "Alright Autobots, roll out."

They all transformed back into vehicles except for Ratchet, who put the Camaro in Ironhide's bed before finally transforming as well.

* * *

><p>As Danielle slowly came to, she stared through bleary eyes as the standing machines folded back up into vehicles and began to drive away.<p>

Despite her fear, she was still in awe of the massive beasts. Their power yet odd grace oozed with such pure performance. She wanted to know more about them but was more worried about being stepped on or run over. Or blown up by the Topkick…

She didn't get up until the dust cloud that followed the cars had settled. She didn't know what to do with herself. Her truck had come alive and held her hostage while its radio went berserk. The Camaro could communicate. The huge black truck had almost killed her. Her response to its threat had been to pour hot lead into anything that moved in front of her, firing blindly, and then topping it all off by passing out.

Her truck was still filthy, but she was afraid it may lose its brakes entirely and run her over or come alive like the other trucks had and try to burn her alive like in her dream.

After all the events of the past 24 hours, to say she was in shock was like saying a hurricane made good winds for kite flying…

* * *

><p>Back on base, Ratchet knew he had a lot of work to do. Bumblebee's armor was extremely damaged; some parts he knew were going to have to be entirely replaced.<p>

The radio and COM link had been the first things he replaced. Several lines and transmitters had burnt out, severing any long distance connection the radio could have made. He wanted to try to fix the Bots vocal transmitters but did not have the parts required to do anything with the system.

Throughout all the procedures, Bee had to be heavily sedated, putting him down into a deep stasis. If he were to online, he would be in the worst pain he may ever feel.

The whole time Bee laid in the medical bay, he was dreaming. His processor was still highly active, going in circles with the recent events: the battle, the loss of Jazz, the curious femme, the odd truck that was with her.

* * *

><p>A week later, Ratchet finally finished with Bee, content with his work at healing the Bot. He let him slowly rise out of stasis on his own, wanting the most rest for Bee as he needed.<p>

When Bumblebee finally onlined, he looked around the medical bay, finding it empty. Internal systems told him how long he'd been down for, and he fretted at this realization. He also knew it was early morning.

He'd felt bad for leaving the femme behind, collapsed on the ground and vulnerable. His spark grew heavy as he was towed away and could only watch as the road lengthened between him and the gravel driveway.

Slowly sitting up from the berth, he narrowed his optics, got to his pedes, and headed for the door. He made it to the hanger entrance of the base and transformed, revving his engine in nervous anticipation of what he was about to embark on. Optimus, and Ratchet for that matter, would be furious with him leaving without word and in his still slightly weakened state. He didn't care though. He knew what had to be done. He knew what _he_ had to do.


	4. A Soldier's Trust

If felt good to be functioning again; feeling the life exploding from his engine, the dirt flying out from underneath his hot tires and out behind him. Bumblebee had only dreamt of racing down back roads while he was injured. Sure, he'd been racing, literally, down the same roads when the Decepticons had viciously attacked the city, but that was different. He'd been racing away for his life.

Now, he pushed himself as fast as the horrible dirt road would allow him to go. His thick tires kicked up a huge dust cloud behind him, which he knew would signal any nearby, and airborne, Decepticon that someone was on the move. But that didn't matter. His mission had to be completed.

Internal maps told him that he was only a few miles from his final destination.

* * *

><p>Lying on her couch, staring at ceiling, Danielle's mind was blank. She traced the patterns on the popcorn ceiling with her eyes but that was about it. The trauma from last week had really taken a toll on her. Despite that fact that it <em>had<em> been a _week_, she still could not force her mind to wrap around any of the events that had transpired.

A few days ago, she'd managed to carry herself to the burn site of the silver car, just to look at what was left. She'd clambered down the slope into the very bottom of the pit, only to find that the edge was just above her head. How could a CAR blow up and leave a crater like this? She reminded herself, for the umpteenth time, that it wasn't _just a car,_ but rather some giant humanoid machine, robot even, that had sat there looking like a car.

Rooting around in the mixed debris, among burned sticks, leaves, and scrap metal, she'd found a little shield. It was very scratched and burned, but the emblem engraved on it was still recognizable. She made out the symbol to match that of the one on her truck's grill.

Heart hammering in her chest, threatening to burst, she pounded home to confirm her growing fear. Holding the shield up to the one on her truck, her breath caught in her throat and she backed away. Clutching the emblem from the Solstice in her fist, she ran inside her house and locked every door and window, pushing desks, tables and other furniture around to further barricade herself.

That had been the day after the giant machines left. Ever since then, she hadn't left the house once. She was running low on food but didn't dare go out near her truck, much less drive it to town to get supplies.

So now she sat around, conserving her energy to prevent herself from getting hungry. Eventually the pangs would get stronger though, and she would try to distract herself by sleeping or daydreaming, escaping to her memories of home when it was still home.

That's where she was right now, daydreaming of life back then. Her father taking her for rides in their (normal, non-living) truck. Picnics with him and mom out in the city park under trickling oak trees, leaves cascading down around them, sunlight glancing off their organic sheen.

A soft purring outside pricked her senses and brought her back to reality. The sound grew, obviously nearing her. It was outside; sounded like a vehicle. Not just any vehicle however, at least not the kind that any of her neighbors had. As it grew louder she could tell by the purr that it was a high-performance engine, the kind made for racing.

She tensed as the vehicle's sound passed her house, the sound growing then beginning to ebb away again in the other direction. Then it stopped. The vehicle revved as it was thrown into reverse and spun around to come back. Danielle's heartbeat quickened. She grabbed the F.N 5.7 as she crept low towards the front window. Peaking up over the ledge, she stopped breathing and gawked as the bright yellow Camaro swung into her driveway. It was perfectly repaired.

Lifting the sill of the window just enough to stick the muzzle of the gun through, she aimed for the car and took a long settling breath. She couldn't let panic seize her this time and turn her into a mad woman, firing at anything that moved like last time.

The car's engine shut off and Danielle held her breath.

* * *

><p>The young yellow Bot sat in the driveway, unsure of what to do next. The truck still sat where it had been when they had left, slightly moved by Ratchet when Bee had been picked up by him.<p>

His audio receptors picked up a soft scraping sound. A quick scan of the house and yard pinpointed the organic's heat marker, putting her at the window in front of him. A cold signature, showing up as a bright blue on the heat scan, alerted him to the weapon she was holding. Not just holding, but _aiming_ at him, he realized. This was the same weapon that had actually managed to damage Ironhide's cannon. He only knew that because Hide had been cursing about it the whole ride back to base.

Ratchet would personally dismantle Bee if he was to be injured again, so he sat in a tense stalemate with the femme for several minutes.

Just as he thought it would be safe to communicate with her, a shot rang out and a bullet resounded off his windshield. A second round was fired and then a third, one bullet grazing his mirror and the other burying itself in his grill, bouncing around in the front of the engine. Luckily it didn't sever any lines or hoses, but it was enough to make him back out onto the road to avoid taking more fire.

* * *

><p>She'd gotten tired of waiting, feeling like the machine was planning something, so she let loose a warning shot. When nothing happened, she aimed for the engine and finally hit home. Whether she'd hurt it or not, she didn't know, or care, but it was obviously enough to make the machine retreat.<p>

She stayed at the window, silently daring the car to approach her again. Metallic whirs and buzzing was heard from around the corner where the car had disappeared to.

A small white sheet, what she recognized as something off her clothes line on the side of her house, fluttered out in the wind, held at one corner by two huge metal fingers.

A full hand appeared and then a giant metal head. She realized that this was the Camaro in his mechanic form. He was standing at his full height, though looked to be much shorter than the semi had been. His head was lowered some, in almost a timid fashion as he took two apprehensive steps forward from behind the bushes on the side of the road.

"Is that some sort of sign of surrender?" she muttered more to herself than to the machine.

He stood there and watched her watch him. The humid air hung still and tense, broken suddenly by a burst of whining static from the boombox radio on a shelf in Danielle's living room. Her head snapped back to look at it, almost expecting it to be some sort of mini-machine coming straight towards her with guns blazing. But it was only a boombox, and the stations switched around and finally landed on one. A song fell from the speakers, a soft melody.

"_So you felt it, but you don't know, why you can't explain at all  
><em>_Why you felt it, 'cause you don't know, no you don't know."_

Static filtered in again as the stations changed; another slow song came on.

"_And you're lying really still but your heartbeat is fast just like mine."_

She looked back at the yellow machine, which had taken a step forward but was now down on one knee in her driveway, still holding the white sheet.

Its eyes, a bright baby blue, felt like they were burning a hole through her, but held no malice. They almost looked… sad? No. That was silly. It's a machine, how could metal _feel_ anything? Yet there it was, the blue orbs staring at her, filled with a quiet pain and sadness.

The static broke again and a faster paced song came on.

"_So let me get this straight. So now you leave me all alone.  
><em>_What makes you hesitate to tell me with words what you really feel,  
><em>_I can see it in your eyes…"_

The static broke in the middle of the sentence as the robot tilted its head sideways at her, gently waving the white sheet back and forth a little.

Danielle narrowed her eyes, unsure of what was happening. She stared straight into the face and asked,

"Is that you making my radio freak out?"

The machine whirred and clicked, nodding. When she looked at it sideways in disbelief, it flashed what she realized were the Camaro headlights in its chest.

This caught her memory and she pulled the gun back inside. Setting it on the desk blocking the front door, she shoved the desk out of the way, unlocked the door, grabbed the gun again, and headed outside.

She noticed the machine glance at her double-handed grip on the weapon as she held it muzzle-down in front of her as she stepped towards it.

_"Here we go for the hundredth time_

_ Hand-grenade pins in every line."_

This time the sounds came directly from the machine.

"What do you want? I'm not going to come out here and face a giant machine empty handed." she hissed at it. It seemed to have cringed at the word "machine".

"Oh, I'm sorry, did I offend you? Do you call yourself something else?" she said sarcastically.

It flashed its lights once but that was it. It seemed somewhat troubled by the question but did nothing else.

"Was that a yes to being offended or having a different name?" she sighed when it only flashed its lights again so she asked "Ok, did I offend you?" it flashed its lights and she bit back a snort of laughter. Alright, so the thing had feelings. Great…

"Do they also call you something else?" It flashed and she nodded. "So you _are_ a machine but that offends you… Does "robot" offend you?" It waved its hand side to side in a "Kinda-sorta" sort of manner. "So then what are you? What am I supposed to call you?"

It looked up and around for a moment, as if searching its mind for something, then a song played.

"_Beyond the boundaries of your city's lights, stem the heroes waiting for your cries.  
><em>_So many times you did not bring this on yourself, but when that moment finally comes, I'll be there to help.  
><em>_On that day when you need your brothers and sisters to care, I'll be right here._

_Citizen soldiers, holding the life of the ones that we guide from the dark of despair,  
><em>_Standing on guard for the ones that we shelter, we'll always be ready because we will always be there._

_Hope and pray that you never need me but rest assured I will not let you down.  
><em>_I walk beside you but you may not see me.  
><em>_The strongest among you may not wear a crown."_

"So… Are you some sort of… soldier? A protector? Wow… I… wasn't expecting that." She fell speechless on this realization. Dropping the gun to her side, she stared up at the machi-er… soldier. She studied its lines and metal plates. She could see where pieces of its body were the shell and other various components of the Camaro. She also came to the conclusion that it was male.

She was about to ask him why he was here to protect her, and _what_ he was protecting her from, when the scream of a too-low flying jet passed overhead. The next thing she knew, one end of her house exploded as a missile struck home. The yellow robot turned his arm into a cannon and began firing at the jet which was doubling back and headed straight for them, guns blazing.

The soldier, (her protector?) stepped between her and the fast approaching jet. Bullets rang off his armor but he kept firing. One blast finally struck the jet's wing, sending it into a tail spin. It rammed into the ground a mile down the road, but the giant plumb of dust and debris was visible even from where Danielle stood.

_"You'll have to trust me ma'am,"_ a radio voice said as the yellow robot looked down at her. When she nodded, his body began to whir and click as pieces moved and it transformed back into the gleaming Camaro. The engine revved loud as the driver's side door opened to her. She hesitated but, when she heard a jet engine again, she jumped in. All at once, the door closed and the seatbelt wrapped tightly around her even as the car spun its tires turning around, heading for the road.

The car was racing down the road, bumps and dips jolting Danielle all over the place. A shaky glance in the outside mirror revealed the black and silver jet racing towards them, a trail of black smoke pouring off the left wing.

"You h-hit it but I th-ink you only p-pissed it o-o-off!" she managed to yell in between bounces. The seatbelt tightened around her as the car raced even faster forward, pressing her back into the seat. Her head almost hit the window as the car veered dangerously to the right onto an old country path, narrowly avoiding a missile that struck the center of the road where they would have been.

The grassy trail they were now on was a little smoother from lack of use in a long time. Danielle could only cling to the leather seat, while the car dodged falling tree branches, the jet shooting holes through the overhead foliage.

The radio cracked to life and a banjo played a lone melody.

"_Country Roads, take me home, to the place, I belong. West Virginia, Mountain momma, take me home, down country roads."_

"OH MY GOD! YOU'RE NOT FUNNY! DRIVE!" she yelled at the car. She knew they were on a back road but now was NOT the time to be looking at the scenery like it was a Sunday drive.

The car rumbled with what Danielle could swear sounded like a laugh. She gritted her teeth and dug her nails into the leather as the car swung sideways, turning onto a little dirt lane that lead to an old barn. They ducked in and the engine shut off even before the car stopped moving. She felt the surrounding darkness of the barn pressing in on the windows, threatening to shatter the glass.

The jet ripped through the air above them, and Danielle expected the barn to explode around them, but nothing happened. The jet circled for several minutes before eventually tearing off into the sky.

Danielle finally remembered to breath and rested her head back on the headrest. Her mind threatened to snap. She didn't know what was going on, why everything had changed so suddenly. She felt like she had finally found a new, decently safe home, but now that was gone. It was blown away before her very eyes; all those years of work to finally be able to afford something that she could call hers. And now it was _gone_.

She felt tears of anger burning behind her eyes. She was so tired of always losing. Sick of always being stuck in the rut that was her life. Just when she thought that everything was ok, it got burned away and took part of her with it. Every time.

She slammed her fists against the steering wheel and let loose. Sobs shook her whole body as emotions tore her apart. She cried and let out little noises but she didn't care anymore. How could she?

Her seatbelt tightened somewhat, feeling like a soft embrace and she leaned back in the seat, turning on her side and hugging herself as she continued to cry. The radio emitted a small pop and a song played softly, so softly she almost couldn't hear it.

"_We were drawn from the weeds, we were brave like soldiers,  
><em>_Fallin' down under the pale moonlight.  
><em>_You were holdin' to me like a'someone broken.  
><em>_And I couldn't tell you but I'm telling you now._

_Just let me hold you while you're falling apart,  
><em>_Just let me hold you so we both fall down.  
><em>_Fall on me, tell me everything you want me to be.  
><em>_Forever with you, forever with me, ever the same._

_Now it's cold and we're scared and we've both been shaken  
><em>_Man, look at us now, this doesn't have to be the end._

_You may need me there to carry all your weight,  
><em>_But you're no burden I assure.  
><em>_Just let me hold you while you're falling apart,  
><em>_Just let me hold you so we both fall down._

_Fall on me, tell me everything you want me to be.  
><em>_Forever with you, forever in me, ever the same."_

The song continued, and brought more tears flowing down Danielle's cheeks. She clutched the side of the seat and it deepened around her. She didn't know why, but she felt like she wanted to trust this car, this soldier. Her soldier.

She whispered a raw "thank you" against the seat as the engine started. Bumblebee pulled out of the barn slowly then headed back for the main road, going at an easy speed so as not to bounce the girl too much. He didn't know why he was so attached to her but he liked the feeling, even though it scared him just as much as it pleased him.

He headed back to the base, not caring so much anymore how Optimus would override his circuits when he saw the femme.

It was a long quiet ride, and Danielle finally cried herself to sleep. The warmth her body radiated against the seat made Bee smile inside. He knew she couldn't hear it but he played a short line from a song anyways;

_ "I just want to save you while there's still something left to save."_

* * *

><p>Starscream had been watching the Autobots that day when they met the fleshling and saved their teammate. He hadn't really expected the yellow glitch to come back for the little human, but it didn't really surprise him as he knew the Bot was known for having a soft side for fleshlings.<p>

He watched their little game of standoff and the pathetic "I surrender" gesture the yellow slag had made to the human.

He couldn't wait for the chance to destroy them both after their little game of cat-and-mouse today.

However, he would have to be patient. With the femme vacant from her house, the truck was now an easy picking. This opened up an easy way to get into the Autobot base and blow them all away, including Prime.

Now, he just had to wait.

**Lyrics:**

_Atrophy _– Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

_Awake_ - Secondhand Serenade

_A Day Late _– Anberlin

_Bleed It Out _– Linkin Park

_Country Road – _John Denver

_Savior_ – Rise Against


	5. Waiting To Die

The evening was just beginning to fall when Bumblebee pulled into the Autobot base. The femme had come out of stasis a while ago, but she never said anything. The echo of Bee's engine in the entry hangar brought the other Bots out to see where he'd been all day. Ratchet started the interrogation.

"Bumblebee!" his voice boomed and echoed. "Where in spark's sake have you been? You should not be out driving when you are still so newly rewired! Something could come undone! And what about your…" he didn't finish his sentence. While he was talking, he had run several quick scans over the Camaro, one of which picked up on the little organic.

Optimus picked up on the human girl as well. "Bee… Why would you bring her back her? I'm disappointed in you." Optimus said while slowly shaking his head. It hurt Bee to hear that from his leader but he quickly explained to everyone via COM link what had happened.

"You still should not have gone back in the first place." Ratchet stated. "You may not have returned if Starscream had found you. And you would have been responsible for losing her life as well. But you're back now I guess. Are all your systems functioning correctly? All the repairs held up well? Good."

Bee opened his door for Danielle to get out but she wouldn't budge. He knew she was afraid of the other Autobots, especially Ironhide. She clung to the seat, unmoving.

Bee didn't want to scare her even more but she had to get out sometime. He transformed, careful to keep track of where her body was, and held her in the palm of his servo once he stood up. She hadn't realized what had happened until she felt the cold of the metal sink into her skin, replacing the warm comfort of the leather; and then she looked down.

"What the fuh-!" she yelped and latched onto Bee's finger. She shut her eyes tightly, not wanting to see the far-away floor.

With a light chuckle, Bee lifted his servo to optic level, curiously studying the little femme. She could be good with a gun, as much as any male soldier he'd ever seen, but she had turned into a little girl when she lost her cool. In her defense though, she had been through a lot lately. He gently stroked her back with one digit, a feather light touch, trying to reassure her. He received no response other than her tightening her grip.

Ironhide finally entered the room and, upon seeing the femme, let out a deep growl. "Why would you bring _that_ back to base?" he said gruffly, not really wanting an answer, just wanting to express his disgust with the creature.

She looked up at him in shock, her eyes widening and mouth hanging slightly open. Her fear of him entertained him.

"She was in danger when Bumblebee was with her so he fled and brought her with him. You can thank Starscream for our guest." Optimus said. Turning to the frightened femme, "No need to be afraid of us. We will not try to harm you, it's against our morals. I am Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots. We came here when our home planet, Cybertron, was destroyed by the Decepticons. They were searching for something called the Allspark, the entity that gave life to all things Cybertronian, from us to our entire planet. It is what I believe you humans call a "deity". The Allspark was sent to Earth and the Decepticons followed it here. We followed them. We are here to protect the Earth from befalling the same fate as Cybertron. In our fight against the Decepticons, these are my Allies: Ratchet, our medial officer; Ironhide, our weapons specialist; Mirage, our spy; and Bee, who is now your guardian. He will go with you when you leave and keep a look out for the Decepticons for you."

Bee sent a private COM link to Optimus: _"Sir, Starscream destroyed her home. She has nowhere to go."_

_ "Does she not have friends or creators to go to?"_

_ "Not that I am aware of sir." To both Optimus and Ratchet he sent "I believe she has been injured though, her processor I mean."_

_ "Very well. Ratchet, take a look at her."_

Optimus turned to the girl "What's your designation, femme?"

"I uh... My designation…? I don't know what that means… like, my name?" He nodded. "Oh, it's Danielle. Danielle Terannce."

"Glad to have you on the team Danielle," and she was startled by his words but let it go.

"Take her to the medical bay," Ratchet said to Bee. "I will be right there. Just don't touch anything! I mean it." Once the two were out of earshot, "Optimus, my supplies for organics are beginning to run low. If she does become gravely injured, do you want me to operate or shall we put her into a human care facility?"

"We will cross that bridge when we get to it. I will keep that in mind though."

The Autobots went back to what they had been doing before, though Ratchet now had the little femme in his ward. Walking up to the medical unit, he heard glass shatter before he even got to the door. Walking in, he saw Bee rush to stand against the far wall, twiddling his thumbs trying to look innocent. The girl sat on the berth, obviously trying to hold back a giggle and failing miserably. Looking around, he finally spotted the remnants of a glass beaker on the floor. _I knew I should have just told him to wait outside for me…_

Sighing, he called for a minibot to come clean up the mess. He prepared his supplies to run the necessary tests and scans on the organic, knowing it wouldn't be easy.

Turning towards her, he caught her optics and asked "So how are you with needles?"

* * *

><p>Sitting in the driveway, the Raptor murmured to himself, felling lonely and confused.<p>

He hadn't known that there were others like himself, vehicles that had life and minds. Hearing the radio transmissions while in town had so entranced him that he didn't even notice Danielle trying to start his engine. When he first heard the language being spoken across the radio waves, it simply sounded like angry computer codes squawking at each other. But when he caught one word, "Autobots", his memory chip clicked. He understood bits and pieces of the strange language and caught on that there was a brawl going down in the city. A big one at the sound of it; one that forced the speakers to fall back.

He could barely remember the last time that he himself had stood up and walked around. Ever since his plates locked, he was stuck in the cramped up vehicle mode. He was still glad that he hadn't scanned the tiny Ford Fiesta, as that would have been even more unbearably cramped than the Raptor form. And he had no doubt that Danielle wouldn't have given him a second glance had he been anything _but_ a truck.

He thought he had done well; saving his human from crashing into the tree that one morning; he thought that he'd made her proud and thankful, maybe even pulled a few sparkstrings. But she fell for that crumpled Camaro as if she'd never even met him, her own truck, before in her life span.

He was shocked when the little red Ferrari had parked next to him, empty. He hadn't the slightest clue what was going on and was just as scared as Danielle when the other trucks pulled up and then _stood_ up.

He had wanted so badly to back up over that black truck's pede when he threatened Danielle. If his plates hadn't been sealed, he would have torn the vile mech apart.

He knew he was running out of time though. He could feel all his main pipe lines either constricting or decaying. It was getting more and more difficult to roll his wheels, or even turn on his lights. Soon, he knew, he would no longer be able to function at all.

He knew he was dying.

* * *

><p>The little femme had quite a tough arm and spirit. Ratchet had to draw blood from her using the only needle he had, one that was almost as long as the human's hand, and a few millimeters thick. He felt bad that he would have to cause her so much pain for such a simple procedure, but it had to be done.<p>

Shockingly, she didn't even flinch when the needle broke her skin, only saying a half-hearted "ow". She certainly had a remarkable pain tolerance.

Handing her a kit with gauze and a few patches, he let her cover the small hole in her arm.

"How did you managed to withstand that without even…" Ratchet asked. Even Bumblebee looked on in disbelief.

Afraid of them thinking she was some sort of freak, Danielle simply said "I just know how to ignore it I guess…"

Ratchet knew immediately that she was lying. He was going to get to the bottom of this humans health situation. But for now he could only nod and continue with his work.

He was shocked to see the deep laceration in the femme's hand. The wrapping on it also surprised him. The quality of the work looked professional, yet she insisted that she had wrapped it herself.

"What happened though?" he asked her.

"While I was um… cleaning Bumblebee, I accidently smashed my hand over a piece of the sharp metal sticking out from his hood. It just bled a lot but didn't hurt too bad," she lied, "really." By the unconvinced look on Ratchets face, she realized that she might have just said too much. She clamped up and only gave short "yes" or "no" answers from there on out.

* * *

><p>Starscream paced impatiently, plotting his sinister ideas for the truck and the Autobots. He knew that the Raptor would know it was him if he returned in his jet form. He needed a new disguise and soon.<p>

Tapping into the extensive knowledge and wisdom of the World Wide Web, Starscream researched a new form to use. He was reluctant to be a groundpounder but didn't have much of a choice.

He finally came upon a strange vehicle called the Firebreather. Even though it was said to be a garage prototype, it was fierce, mean, fast, and most importantly, slick. Numerous articles about it described it as a cross between a Firebird and a Camaro. Balking at having to resemble anything like an Autobot, he changed courses and looked into other options.

Regretting that his plan included the Raptor's trust in him, he settled for a low profile, non-threatening vehicle: a Toyota Prius. Advertisements for it made it sound like a fun obnoxious little frag of a car, so he figured the Raptor would not be afraid or distrusting of the façade.

Plugging himself into the web page via the ship, he downloaded all the information of the frame and setup of the car. Finally done, he ejected himself from the ship, landed, and transformed into the light green Prius. The pictures had somehow made it seem bigger...

Trying to figure out how to turn on the engine to move forward, he ended up electrocuting himself several times. He eventually figured out that he could not override or by-pass a battery-run only phase that lasted until he reached a certain speed. Checking the available information he had on the vehicle, he finally discovered, _in small print_, that it was designated as a "Hybrid Vehicle", half electric-half gasoline powered. He wanted to slam himself into a wall... But he doubted that he could squeeze enough power from the little engine to even do any damage…

Cursing his folly, Starscream followed his internal map to the long dirt road leading out of the city. At first, the dust only bothered his fans. A mile and a half down the road, things began to turn rough and bumpy so he was forced to slow down. He could only go an infuriatingly agonizing twenty miles per hour, a speed that was well below the threshold needed for his engine to run, so he relied on the battery to propel himself forward. The dirt road quickly turned sandy and soft, trapping his tires. The battery provided him with enough power to spin his rear tires, but not to get him out. He cursed and raged inside his tiny-hybrid self for not picking something with four-wheel-drive.

He transformed and walked out of the soft patch of sand, then transformed back as a vehicle was approaching him from the rear. Normally he would not have cared if a fleshbag saw him, but this time, it could compromise his mission if one did. The old Chevrolet truck lumbered slowly behind him, easily traversing the soft patch of sand as if it wasn't any different from the rest of the road.

Muttering Cybertronian curses to himself, it was all he could do to keep a decent pace in front of the truck, which was now following close on his tail. Just as he thought he saw a solid and flat stretch of sand, he sped up in evil delight, eager to get to his prey.

All he managed to do was cross a couple feet in a quick skid, angled sideways, and bury his tires almost up to his axles in soft sand. He spun and spun but only threw sand out behind him, burying himself deeper.

Seething with white-hot rage, he was forced to summon a holoform when he saw the driver of the truck behind him get out and walk towards him. The fleshbag was laughing at him. "_How dare he! That incompetent fool!"_ he bellowed inwardly, making his battery whine in a high pitch squeal.

"Need'a hand there, bud?" came the chuckling voice of the truck driver, flashing a gap-toothed smile. He put his hand on the roof of the Prius and leaned in towards the holoform.

"No. I need a different vehicle is what I need!" he retorted, briefly entertaining the thought of simply killing the little human and taking his truck. But he couldn't compromise his mission, he admitted to himself.

"I can pull ya outta there if ya like. Where ya'll headed anyways? Aint no one ever comes back to these'ere parts 'less they gots'em some fam'ly to visits."

Cringing at the human's poor grammar and lack of intelligence and teeth, Starscream begrudgingly nodded and told him the address he was heading to, saying the person owed him some money.

The man eyeballed the holoform disapprovingly before shrugging and walking back to his truck for some ropes. After bringing his truck around in front of the little car, he tied the Prius' front axle to the truck's towing hitch and pulled the car all the way to the gravel driveway. When they'd had to skirt around the charred crater still in the ground, Starscream couldn't help but smile.

The man gave a "howdy" and tipped a nonexistent hat at Starscream, who dismissed the fleshling with a wave of his fake hand. He sat at the end of the driveway, behind some bushes, not wanting to pull in just yet. The sun would start to set soon, which wouldn't give him enough time to complete what he wanted to, so he would wait till morning.

Then the real fun would begin.


	6. The Darkest Truth

Ratchet had finally finished running all of the necessary tests and scans that he thought we appropriate, and by now it was nearing sunset.

"Are you sure that you feel fine? Nothing is wrong or _hurting_?" Ratchet emphasized the last word. Danielle simply shook her head at him, ignoring the inflection in the Bot's voice, and tried to give a small convincing smile.

"No sir, I'll be alright, thanks."

"Don't call me 'sir', just Ratchet. Optimus is the only one around here that should be addressed as 'sir'."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I'll try to remember that si…sorry" she chuckled quietly.

"One more thing. I've been informed that you will be staying here with us, as your shelter was destroyed by Starscream, the jet that blew up your home. He is a Decepticon, part of the league that works against us Autobots. Anyways, I am sorry to say that we don't have any organic rooms for you to stay in, so for now you'll be staying right here in the medical bay. I will try to gather some provisions to make your stay a little more comfortable." He said before walking out, leaving Danielle in the med bay by herself.

She was missing her soldier, whose named turned out to be Bumblebee. She thought it was quite a cute, and suiting, name. Ratchet had chased him out of the medical bay when they began the psychological tests. They all thought something would be wrong with her head after all the recent events. They were right of course, but she'd never admit that.

While Ratchet was gone, and to Danielle's delight, Bumblebee snuck back into the bay to see her. He brought with him a sheet of paper with a blueprint printed on it. Circled in red was the medical bay and circled in yellow and black was a room down the hall, which Bee indicated was his.

She didn't know why he'd given her the directions to his room but she didn't mind. She liked knowing where her guardian was.

"_Her Guardian_." The thought bounced around her mind and made her feel safe.

Before he slipped out of the room, Bee played a "Goodnight m'lady" and took a small bow. She giggled and waved goodbye to the silly Bot. She didn't know why but, even before he disappeared behind the door, she found herself missing him…

Minutes later, Ratchet returned, toting a few pieces of cloth. He explained their lack of human-size sheets and that she'd have to make do with some freshly cleaned polishing rags from Mirage's tool kit. The cloth was bright white and very soft to the touch so she didn't mind that much. She folded one over a few times to make a pillow and crawled in between two more.

"These will actually do quite well, si-Ratchet. Thank you." She smiled up at him, hoping that he hadn't caught her near slip of tongue.

"Hopefully you will go to town tomorrow to purchase proper provisions for yourself. Don't worry about cost, we can cover whatever it is that you need. But rest for now, you've had a long day." With that said, he turned out the main light and left.

Various unidentifiable machines gave off dim glowing light, enough light to allow her to see, but not enough to keep her awake. She fell asleep swiftly, with thoughts of Bee buzzing around in her head.

_She was twirling happily in her favorite yellow sundress, dancing with the dragonflies. A friendly honk announced the arrival of her father in his big blue truck, carrying Jeramie Haughnt. They ran around playing tag for a while before finally tagging "base", a massive old oak tree in the side yard. They both collapsed in a fit of giggles, Jeramie teasingly pulling on some of Danielle's hair. She pinched him back and he squealed. Even though she was only five years old, and Jeramie six and a half, she had something like a crush on him_

_She looked up to the sky as a bluebird flew by, tweeting and singing a happy tune. Turning back to Jeramie, he was now eighteen pushing nineteen, and she was seventeen. He gave her hand a tight squeeze and smiled sheepishly before landing a kiss on her cheek. They'd grown up together, and the whole neighborhood expected them to get married in a few years. She did like him, and had for a while, but the idea of marriage just wasn't very appealing to her right now._

_She wasn't going to let that spoil the moment though. She leaned against his strong shoulder and sighed. She was going to miss this._

_There had been talk of Jerrie having to move away soon, going off to college for an engineering degree out of state. She didn't have the funds for a higher education, so she would just stay home and get a job._

_The temperature under the oak tree fell several degrees all of a sudden, bringing Danielle's attention to the mounting black clouds in the distance. A streak of molten silver slashed the sky, thunder boiling the air a second later. Fat rain drops began to fall sparingly, then a torrential downpour descended._

_Jerrie pulled her up and out from under the tree. Standing in the rain, he pulled her close to him and kissed her. Electricity ran through them, feeling like they were the ones charging the storm overhead._

_Pulling his face away but still holding her, he whispered a sweet thing in her ear before dashing towards the front door as the storm worsened. She felt her stomach twist into a sickening knot as they entered her empty house. Mom and dad were no longer home, and Jerrie knew that too well._

_He shut the door and gently pushed her back against it, kissing her again and running his hands along her sides. She pushed him back, giggling halfheartedly. He responded by pulling her closer and going in for another kiss. She pulled away completely this time, wanting to tell him "no" but her voice was thick in her throat, unable to roll off her tongue._

_He picked her up and took her to the living room couch, laying her down and then climbing on top, kissing her again as he began to explore her stomach with his hand._

_Her head was screaming against his touch. She didn't want this, not yet, not from him. Shaking her head, she managed to roll him off of her and get to her feet. She'd pushed too hard and he fell to the floor, cursing as he got up again. But she'd already started running. Dashing into her room, she turned to lock the door but wasn't quite fast enough. He'd managed to get his foot in the door and was pushing it back open._

_She threw her body against the solid wood, her shoulder vibrating with the force. She tried to keep him out but he was stronger, inching the door open again, cursing at her, calling her "_his girl_" and saying that she should prove that she loved him._

_She tried to scream "_no!"_ but only a black fog rolled from her mouth, falling to the floor. The dense smoke weighed heavy on her tongue as it continued to pour out from her and fill the room. She couldn't close her mouth, and she couldn't stop the smoke. Soon it was up past her ankles, steadily rising as she continued to try to scream. Jerrie was there, laughing at her, suddenly in her room, the door shut and locked behind him._

_The smoke fell from her and now from her window on to her bed, cascading onto her floor. The black tide rose, shifting as Jerrie walked toward her, pushing her towards the bed._

_The smoke was all around now, it filled her room, rising just below Jeramie's shoulders, leaching oxygen from the air. She coughed, choking on it. Her throat felt like it was stuffed with dense cotton, stopping her breathing entirely._

_She was weak and he knew it. He pushed her down, his eyes gleaming, a flicker of red in them. His smile was ugly, cracked. One hand ran down her side to the hem of her jeans. He slipped a finger under it and ran it towards her zipper. When she tried to pull his hand away, resisting his touch, he yelled at her and growled. Enraged, he raised his hand to strike her._

Danielle woke with a start, her forehead dripping with sweat. Though it didn't seem possible, her heart quickened when she couldn't figure out where she was. She reached for the F.N 5.7 but it was no longer in her pocket.

Panic swept over her before small waves of memory and realization lapped at her mind, bringing her back to reality. She was at a base, in a medical bay, where the Autobots resided. She was safe.

Concentrating on her breathing, she laid her head back down and tried to stop shaking. The medical bay was cold, making her damp body and clothes sap her body heat. She curled up, trying to keep some warmth, when her hand grasped a piece of paper lying under her makeshift pillow.

_Bumblebee!_ Holding the paper up into the dim lamplight, she memorized the path to the Bot's quarters before folding it into her pocket.

She jumped down from the berth before actually trying to judge the height. Her ankle fell to the side and she landed on her butt. The ankle didn't hurt, but it was a significant hindrance since it wouldn't hold much of her weight without folding over again.

Thinking nothing of the injury, she made her way to Bumblebee's room and crept in. The door had been left ajar, so she assumed that he'd expected her to eventually come by.

His yellow plates glinted softly in the muted moonlight that drifted in through a small window on the wall farthest from the door, high above where the Bot lay. He looked so still, so peaceful, she was afraid she might disturb him. She turned to leave but another chill rippled through her. She remembered his warm leather seats and decided she'd try to find them in him.

Climbing a nightstand up to his berth, she stood by his head. Gingerly grabbing the metal on his shoulder, she pulled and scooted her way up to his chest, working her way up with just two hands and one leg since the one ankle was being uncooperative. It was closed, solid metal. No leather seats to be found.

The midnight effort was pulling on her eyelids; her body felt like lead, cold lead. While searching around, she had discovered that one point in the very center of Bee's chest was warmer than the surrounding areas. Curling up in the middle of it, she fell asleep, feeling safe from her nightmares.

Censors roused him from recharge, warning him of a small organic being crawling around on his chest plates. Onlining his optics, he found his little femme curled up over his spark chamber. He thought he saw her shiver and a quick scan revealed that her body temperature was lower than normal. Funneling the heat from what would normally be his cannon into his servo, he gently covered her body with it. She soon stopped shaking and he felt it safe to return to recharge, locking his hand in place over her to keep her warm.

His own spark had never felt such a wondrous heat before.

Ratchet went to wake the human but found her berth empty. The base was huge, she could get lost so easily; even stepped on if she wasn't careful. Edging fear laced his circuits as he notified the other Autobots to watch where they stepped and to be on the lookout. They all responded except for Bumblebee.

A sneaking suspicion rose in his processor as he went to the Camaro's quarters. He found the door ajar so he poked his head in. The little human was deep in recharge on Bee's chest plates.

He was about to rumble an angry "Good morning!" when Bee placed a digit over his mouthplates in a shushing manner.

Via COM link _"I don't want to wake her just yet"_ Bee said, his young voice apologetic.

_"How did she end up in here? Did you take her from my office?"_

_"No, no. She just… found her way here in the middle of the night."_ He whirred in a light laugh, careful to stay quiet.

Ratchet raised something akin to an eyebrow at him. There was no way the femme had found her way here in the dark, at least not unassisted.

_"Just have her to me within the next hour."_ He shook his head and left before notifying the others of the all-clear.

Bee replied with a _"Thank you, Ratchet!"_ but the medical Bot only huffed. He must be getting soft…

With the sun just high enough in the sky finally, Starscream found the time appropriate to approach the Raptor.

Pulling up alongside the filthy wretch, he sent out a radio message to it.

_"Why are you still here?" _he asked the truck.

The engine sputtered in surprise at the visitor. _"What? Who are you? What do you mean?"_

_"Why are you _here_ and not with your human?"_ He dropped the hook, now to wait for the bite.

_"She, I… I don't know. She went out for a while?"_ the last part was more of a question than an answer. He was running around the truth but Starscream knew he could pull it out, make the Raptor say it. _"You didn't answer my ques…"_

_"Went out?"_ he interrupted._ "Where could she go without you? Her little human legs can't carry her far, and why would she walk when she has _you_?" _When the Raptor only coughed, pushing gray smoke out the back, Starscream knew he was close to the wound. _"Has she found a new carrier?"_

Sickened and frustrated by the puny car's incessant questions, the Raptor hoarsely shouted back through the radio _"She left me ok? What do you want from me? You still haven't even told me who you are! Answer me bug!"_

Shaking off the timid insult, Starscream smiled within. The hook had been swallowed. Perfect. _"My designation does not matter. I have come here to help you rescue your human. I have processes that will fix you entirely, return you to your original state. No longer will you be stuck in that pathetic, locked-up, useless chasse."_ Quiet static told him that he was hitting the Raptor's spark. Now for the final strike.

_"You are the human's guardian, are you not? Then you must get her back. The Autobots have taken her and will offline her once they are done with her. They will rewire her circuits, if they haven't already. They will make her hate you, want nothing to do with you. She would drive you into a smelter if given the chance. They control her now, and will use her against you. Why? Because you are a threat to them. You hold more power than you know; If given the right tools, you can easily overpower the Prime."_

_"That's ridiculous. I'm a rusting bucket of slag. I could never take down a Prime…"_

The line was slipping but Starscream wasn't about to let him off the hook just yet. _"What about that yellow Bot? Do you think you could offline him? He is the one using the femme,_ your ward, _for his own pleasure after all. She is his own personal slave; I have seen him push her around. Just like that human boy did to her."_ He hissed in wicked glee, knowing the nerve he'd just stuck with an iron hammer.

The Raptor revved his engine in the deepest fury, smoking-black hate exploding from his exhaust pipes. In tight clipped words, the Raptor spoke. "I' . .shreds."

The hook had buried itself in the Raptor's spark: there was no escaping now. The mission was complete. _"Good"_ he hissed. _"Then we have a deal. You get your human back once you destroy the Autobots, including the Prime."_

_"Consider them terminated."_

Starscream summoned the Nemesis to his location, a surgical ward prepared and on standby for the pitiful case of the Raptor. Once he was repaired, however, he could end up as Starscream's greatest weapon.

"Normally you would be sent with your guardian but he had to leave on a scouting mission today that only his vehicle mode can handle." Ratchet explained to Danielle. He hadn't been kidding when he said that she'd be going to town to "gather provisions" today. "Besides, Mirage is just as capable of protecting you while you collect supplies for yourself. You will find your payment device in his glove compartment. Just be back before sundown."

Mirage shifted from pede to pede, anxious about having a possibly destructive organic sitting on his leather seats. She might even stain them somehow. But Optimus had not just told him that he had to do this, he had _ordered_ him to take on this mission.

The hangar door was open and both Mirage and Danielle were ready to leave. He transformed into the lustrous Ferrari and opened the driver's side door. She sat down gingerly, eyes wide in wonder, fingers gracing the leather seats and steering wheel, gingerly caressing the stick shift.

"_A stick shift? This is going to be fun," _she thought to herself, smiling. Her appetite for sick speed had just tripled.

Grabbing the stick and steering wheel, pressing the clutch, she was ready to go.

"What are you doing femme?" a peeved Mirage asked, his Italian accent getting thicker.

"I'm driving…? What does it look like?"

"Si, and that is _all_ you will do. You will _look_ like you're driving. I won't have your foot in my carburetor, _no grazie signora_." And with that, the steering wheel, gas pedal, clutch, and stick shift all locked up as Mirage and a pouting Danielle pulled out of the hangar.

Soon they hit a highway that Danielle didn't even know existed, much less where it led to. She didn't mind much though; Mirage apparently liked speed just as much as she did. They raced over the pavement, clocking in around 115 miles per hour, well over the speed limit.

"So where are we going exactly?" she asked.

"Your town was… severely damaged, so we will go to a different one that I know of. We will have to stop at a mall first though, to get you proper attire for this mission."

"Proper attire? What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" She looked down at her wrinkled and filthy Wrangler's, stretched out tank top, and almost brown, formerly white, sneakers. If she was just going shopping, and she assumed it was only to something like a Super Wal*mart, then she looked decent enough.

"Where we are going there is a dress code. You will need something semi-formal to even be able to walk on the sidewalks. This town is very, how you say… affluent. Besides, _per una_, I refuse to be seen in a supermarket parking lot with all the other scraps. _Secondo_, I am used to living luxuriously and, how you say, in the "high-life". So, you will go where I take you. _Capito signora_?"

Danielle stared blankly at the radio. Semi-Formal for street wear? High life? This was going to be a long day… "Um, yea… I got'cha. I think…"

"You will also have to speak properly, femme, or they will not sell to you."

_"Oh boy…"_ she thought dryly.

Thirty minutes later, they pulled into a secluded strip mall. The store Mirage directed her to was called "Caché" and nothing was priced under $40. She picked out a white pair of bootcut dress pants, a bright baby-blue one-shoulder shirt with ruffles on the only strap, and a pair of matching earrings. She paid the $127 bill with the credit card that she'd ecstatically found in the glove compartment. She headed out to the car, bags in hand, when she spotted the shoe store next door. Twenty minutes later, she came out with a pair of $85 sandy-white three-inch heels that strapped over her toes and around her ankles.

Reconsidering changing _inside of _Mirage, and despite the strange looks from the employees, she ran back in Caché, changed clothes in one of the dressing rooms, then ran back out to the Ferrari.

While he was driving, she put on the heels. She had trouble with one, as the ankle strap barely fit around her now green, black and purple ankle, swollen from her fall last night. Quickly covering it with her pant leg, she ignored it for the rest of the drive.

The day went surprisingly fast. Even though most of the store clerks and shoppers were snobs, Danielle almost enjoyed herself. She'd managed to find enough clothes to last her several weeks without a washing machine. One "home goods" store sold decent bed sheets and pillows. When she bought food to last her a decently long time, she also grabbed a few candles and a lighter just for the heck of it.

She was having trouble carrying everything to the door, especially with a bandaged hand, when a relatively short but lean man came up to her, offering her a hand.

"Oh no thanks dude, I got this." she said as she waddled closer to the exit.

"Don't be so stubborn signora. Let me help." The man grabbed the bed comforter and a bag from her hands. "And what did I tell you about speaking properly?"

Danielle stopped in her tracks as she gaped at the man. He was clearly Italian, both by his accent and his appearance. But she didn't expect "Mirage?" Her eyes felt like they were bugging out of her head.

"Si, now let's go." He walked on to the Ferrari still parked out front. She caught up to him while he was trying to fit all her stuff into the nearly nonexistent trunk. When it wouldn't fit, Mirage's hologram pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. He made the metals of the car shift around and the trunk opened up some more. Now, everything fit.

Danielle gracefully climbed down into the driver's seat, Mirage's image sat down in the passengerside. Once they left the lot and there were no people close by, the Italian man in the passenger seat flickered then disappeared.

Pulling up to the stoplight that lead in a straightaway to the on ramp of the highway, Danielle looked to her left to find a gorgeous Audi R8, and an even more gorgeous young man driving it. He looked over at her and the surprise on his face was evident. She knew she was quite a sight in the red sports car.

Feeling like she hadn't had enough fun that day, she noticed Mirage had forgotten to lock the accelerator, so she stepped on in it, making the engine scream.

"What are you doing!" came Mirage's very angry voice.

"Hey, if you're really as hot as you think you are, then _prove it! _'Cause frankly, I think you'd get beat by a Volkswagen, so you're probably not even a close match for that Audi." She couldn't hide the smirk in her voice or off her face. When the engine screamed again, without her doing this time, she knew it was on.

Looking back at the Audi driver, who revved his engine high, she winked and pressed the gas again. But this time, she grabbed the stick shift and Mirage knew what she wanted and there was no way around it: Everything unlocked for her.

The light turned green and she nailed the gas. Shifting, she flew off the line, the Audi staying at her side. The road stretched before her, the noise of the engines harmonizing as they tore down the improvised drag strip.

"Come on Mirage, I _know_ you have more than this! Are you more afraid of a nick in your paint or losing to a German car?" she sneered at him. She felt the engine rumble in disgust. Looking over at the R8 driver who had a slight lead, she saw him glance at her briefly. She winked one last time and blew a flirty kiss before the Ferrari threw her back into the seat, climbing to 187 miles per hour and leaving the Audi sucking fumes.

Danielle couldn't help herself: she burst out laughing triumphantly and patted the stick shift. "I knew you had it in you! Just had to dig for it a little bit."

Mirage responded by giving an extra kick, topping out at 202 miles per hour and held there, screaming down the highway, weaving through the traffic, passing cars and police alike.

Regardless of the speed, the ride back to the base felt longer than before. It gave Danielle's mind time to wander. Her thoughts ambled back to her now ultra-crispy house and her Raptor. Would the Autobots let her go back for it? Could it even make it to the base? Over the last few months it had been deteriorating at an impeccable rate. No mechanic in the entire city was able to pinpoint a reason for it either. Maybe her knew machine friends could repair it…

She could only sit and wonder while they wound their way back to base, where she hoped Bumblebee waited for her.


	7. Failure's Tears

After the long day of shopping and racing, Danielle and Mirage went their separate ways once back in the hangar. Eager to see Bumblebee, she powerwalked down the hallways that led to his quarters. Halfway there, she ran into Optimus.

"Just who I needed to see," he said, bending down to pick her up. Eyeing his imposing hand, and height, she hesitated. "I promise not to drop you Danielle." he chuckled. Unwillingly, she clambered up and held on tightly to whatever she could grip.

In only a few steps, they'd back-tracked the entire first half of the hallway to Optimus' quarters. His room was incredibly spartan: a cold steel berth, gray concrete walls, and a few nearly-bare shelves. He set her down on the lowest shelf directly across from his berth, where he now sat, looking at her. She sat down too, not knowing what was about to happen.

"Please forgive the informality but something quite urgent has come to my attention. Therefore, I need to know where your Ford F-150 Raptor SVT originated from. Where was it created and how did it come to be in your possession?"

The question caught her way off guard. Taken aback, she mentally stumbled for an answer. "I uh… My father owned it when I was little. He bought it from an auction when I was three or four years old, I don't really remember. All I know is that the truck is at least eighteen years old, which is incredible. When my father um… passed away, I took ownership since my mom didn't want it for the memories attached to it."

"Has it ever behaved unlike a normal vehicle?"

"I don't think so… I mean…" She'd never really thought twice about things that happened with the Raptor. However, now that she put all the individual events into one cluster of memories, she realized just how out of the normal the vehicle had, indeed, behaved. Two things that struck hard were, first, the similarity of the truck's steering wheel locking up in the tree incident to Mirage locking his steering wheel when she tried to drive him; second, the way the Raptor's radio antenna had shape-shifted like the Autobots transform into and out of their vehicle modes. She admitted "Well yea, it did act really strange sometimes… But I don't understand where you're going with this. What's the point you're trying to make here?"

"It is not that you don't understand, it is that you are afraid to. Bumblebee briefed me on his time in your custody, how the truck drove itself into him and lengthened its antenna to allow him to communicate with us via its radio. This gives us full reason to believe that the Raptor SVT is Cybertronian, and has full capability to transform like we do. And the life span is a factor as well. You are correct to believe that eighteen years is a very long time for any American-made factory vehicle to remain in operational condition. Did you know he was like us?"

"No… I had no idea. I mean, if anyone had told me that my truck could come alive and stand up at any second I wouldn't have believed them. At least not until now obviously. If he's one of you guys, could we bring him here? To stay? Maybe Ironhide or you could teach him how to fight, make him an ally against the Dissectaconds or whatever they are."

"Decepticons. And yes, we had arranged for that. That was, infact, Bumblebee's mission today; To return to your previous residence, retrieve the Raptor, and bring him back to ba-"

Danielle stood up and let out a small squeal of joy. "Oh thank the good Lord! He's here? I want to see him! It's been so long! I miss my baby so much Optimus! Please, take me to him!" She practically vibrated with electric excitement.

When the large Bot failed to move, frozen partly by her phrasing of calling the truck her "baby" and partly by the remorse that weighed on his processor, her happiness began to sink.

"I… regret to inform you that Bumblebee returned alone. He searched the grounds for the Raptor but there was no sign of it. Further inspections failed to show any tire tracks leading out of the driveway, however he found a small set leading into it from the road. Were you expecting any visitors?"

She wanted to laugh at his question but her heart was tearing apart at the seams. She shook her head numbly, trying not to accept that her truck, her pride and joy, had been stolen. She didn't want to believe it; she desperately ran through what Optimus had just told her, desperate to find loop holes or flaws but came up empty.

"I am sorry for your loss Danielle. We are searching for him with whatever resources available, but you must understand that we are still at war. Unfortunately, we have other previous priorities."

"Yea… um, I know, but thanks, I guess..." Her stomach in knots, she didn't want to be there anymore. "Can I uh… go now? Sir?" He nodded before picking her up and placing her outside his door. A halfhearted wave goodbye and she started walking away, back towards Bumblebee's quarters once again. Every so often, her still-discolored and swollen ankle wobbled, casting her off balance. She cursed it under her breath but kept walking.

Five minutes later, after a last minute stop in the medical bay to rummage through her stuff, she was knocking on the ginormous door to Bee's quarters. He opened the door, looked around, and then shut it again, not seeing anyone and not thinking to look down. She knocked again, he opened it again. This time she yelled "Down here dude…"

Bee whirred happily, his optics brightening. He scooped her up and brought her in. It didn't take long for him to pick up on the little human's sadness. He knew exactly why she was hurting.

Holding her close to his spark, he tried to comfort her but she wasn't having it.

"No, no, no Bee. I didn't come here for a pity-party thrown in my name… I wanted to give you something." She looked away from his optics, her heart heavy. "I had gone back to the crater a while ago, where your friend had been. There really wasn't much left but I did find this at the very bottom. I'm sorry I couldn't clean it or anything, but I still thought you should have it." With that, she reached into her pocket and pulled out the Autobot grill emblem that had adorned Jazz's grill. She held it out for Bee to grab between his two fingers. He held it close to his optics before whirring and nodding.

"So I guess we're even now, huh big guy?" she said dismally. "I saved you but lost your partner, you saved me but lost mine. It happens. I don't blame you for any of it, just so you know. No hard feelings Bee." She mustered the best smile she could considering the circumstances.

He looked down at her, leaning his head to the side. His radio cracked and played a song:

"_It's a shame that it had to be this way,  
><em>_It's not enough to say I'm sorry.  
><em>_It's not enough to say I'm sorry.  
><em>_Maybe I'm to blame or maybe we're the same."_

She hugged his giant thumb before sinking down, leaning against it, her forehead pressed against his metal. He gently brushed her back with his digit, wishing he could hug her tight.

They sat like that for a while, in silence. Bee couldn't take his optics off his femme. He was surprised at that thought, "_his__ femme_", but he liked it. It was something that pleased him even amongst all the sorrow and suffering.

* * *

><p>The whole day, Starscream worked on the Raptor. With the assistance of a systems-hacking software, Starscream was able to wrench apart the outer plates to eventually unfold the truck into his true form. Laid out fully on the medical berth, in a forced recharge, the Raptor was dark and quiet.<p>

At first, Starscream didn't know what to do with the corruption of the truck's systems. Every wire, hose, pipe, and piston was covered in a copper-colored powder that clung to the metal like toxic mold to a wall. Direct scans of the substance found it to be at least nineteen years old. Starscream knew exactly where the substance had come from but still needed further research to pinpoint its biological and geological origins.

Removal wasn't easy, but it was possible if enough heat and scraping was applied. While further analysis was run on the contamination, he managed to remove most, if not all, of the strange infestation.

Once the base of the metal body was clean of foreign filth, Starscream set to work "repairing" his new weapon. The Raptor had surprisingly high-powered munitions; Canons and heavy artillery were the highlight of the weapons system, along with a higher-than-standard defense mode. Tweaking a few wires in his processor would upgrade both systems, turning this truck into an artillery tank.

Many grueling hours later, the project was almost finished. Starscream had planted a microchip in the Raptor to alter its thought processes and some memory, and upgrade its weapons and defense systems even further.

He was no longer a lumbering Raptor; now, he was a swift, accurate, killing machine. A Velociraptor.

* * *

><p>A broiling desert sun burned the new horizon in the early hours of the morning, leaving half the sky orange, pink and yellow, and the other half light blue, indigo, and a dark violet. The sand dunes glittered in anticipation of the giant star's heat, dust flitting from dune to dune like finches eager for a new perch.<p>

Starscream had maneuvered the Nemesis over the dry rural landscape about a hundred miles from the city, where he instructed his new weapon on how to hunt, shoot, and finish any opponent it may ever encounter.

The Velociraptor had risen from stasis later than expected but the extra recharge seemed to have further boosted its systems. That much had been evident in the first trial tests of Starscream's schedule. Having to teach the Velociraptor how to walk again had taken some time, as did the basics of transforming back and forth between modes, and being half-and-half for driving while firing cannons. Once the bot got the hang of it though, it was difficult to settle down into a instructionally-receptive state.

With the petty basics out the way, Starscream's favorite part of any training day came in turn. Fifty or more old decommissioned vehicles sat in the sand at various distances from the Velociraptor. The rust buckets made perfectly iconic targets to shoot both small arms weapons and cannons at.

Pointing at a decrepit and wheel-less yellow Jeep with a bold orange stripe on the side, "Now that you know how to aim, I want you to vaporize that Jeep with only one cannon round. Can you do that?" Starscream sneered.

Judging the distance, the wind's speed and direction, and the angle of the target to himself, the Velociraptor raised a shaky cannon in the jeeps direction. He held his fire, still trying to line up his sights correctly.

Impatient with the slow performance, Starscream slapped the cannon down to the truck's side.

"What are you doing you idiot? If that was an Autobot sitting there, watching you point a hot cannon at him, do you really think he would allow you that much time to aim and fire? He would have offlined you long ago!" he snapped. "I'll give you two seconds to fire this time! If you don't, I will take the position of your opponent and offline you myself! Now _fire_!"

Upset by his teacher's acidic words, he hurriedly raised his gun in the Jeep's general direction and fired. Sand exploded fifteen feet behind the car, covering it in a layer of orange sediment. He fired again, afraid of an impending reprimand. This time, the round struck the vehicle, though not dead on.

"Good job. You've wounded him and now he will call for help and the rest of the Autobot army will come in and obliterate you. You incompetent fool. Again! Red car, eighty degrees left!" he hissed vehemently.

The Velociraptor swung his cannon around, locked onto the car and fired twice. One round scorched the front end of the car, setting the tires on fire, the other round landed well in front of the target. He hung his head, knowing he continued to disappoint his teacher. How was he ever supposed to take down four Autobots? One of which was a weapons specialist and another a Prime…

Growling in frustration with his failing new weapon, Starscream decided to take a different approach. "You obviously are not too concerned with your own beating spark. What about that of you human ward? See that bush there, in front of that black truck? That there is your femme. Can you see the bruises and cuts all over her?" _He_ could see a silent rage building behind the Velociraptor's optics, a tiny ring of red emerging around the very center of them. The microchip Starscream had planted was working. "She's about to offline, you know? The black truck did that to her, they call him Ironhide. He used her for small arms target practice. 'Guess he has better aim then you, hm?" A wicked pleasure writhed through his circuits seeing the red ring expand, overtaking the blue, as the truck began to shake slightly with pain and fury. Taking a step closer and leaning near to the Velociraptor's audio receptors, he whispered a short and gruff order: "Fire."

Starscream barely had time to step back before the truck started to fire round after supercharged round into the ebony target. Sand exploded all around as flames leapt high into the air, a black smoke pluming upwards like a malicious tumor into the sky's bosom.

When the dust settled, a small crater had been blown into the sand dune, a sickening scrap heap of black twisted metal jutting out at in all directions, flames licking the spires like rabid serpents in a spear pit.

"Better," was all the recognition received for the destruction of the vehicle. His weapon was coming along quite well; perhaps training would not take as long as Starscream had planned.

Inside the Velociraptor's processor, fury, pain, and pure hate thrashed about, drawing boiling fluid from his optics. He had never felt such a bold, _black, _hate like that before. The need to completely destroy the "Autobot" in front of him had been so powerful, so completely violent, that every measurement of distance, wind, and angles was processed precisely and simultaneously. All he had to do was pull the trigger; his body had done the rest of the work for him.

It shocked him how easy it was to offline the enemy. It was so easy to kill, and once the task was complete, the feeling of accomplishment, pride, relief, and various other pleasures made the whole short ordeal very rewarding. He liked the full-bodied feeling of dominance and devastation. On top of it all, he knew he could finally meet his teacher's values.

Starscream stepped forward, a devilish smile on, and pointed at a large blue dump truck.

"Again."

* * *

><p>After a fuss with Ratchet the night after Danielle's shopping spree, Bumblebee had finally succeeded in attaining the medical Bot's permission to allow Danielle to stay in Bee's quarters until a room was made for her. Even though a makeshift cot had been put next to Bee's berth, Danielle slept on his chest plates.<p>

So every morning she would wake up on his warm metal, feeling safe under his heavy servo. A couple times she was able to wake up before he onlined from recharge. It was astonishing to see his eyes, which they called optics, turn on: the gray steel orbs cold and empty then suddenly, from the very center of them a bright blue light would ignite, quickly spreading out to the edges. When they focused and locked onto her, the most thrilling electric feeling ran through her whole body.

Though she didn't know it, it was the same feeling Bumblebee felt when he watched her wake up in the morning, seeing her eyes sparkle and her mouth smile when she saw him.

A week later, this morning was no different than the others. She woke up on his chest plates, under his servo, cozy as a bug in a rug. They laid there for ten minutes before a commotion erupted in the main hanger, yells reverberating down the halls. There was a deafening cannon blast that shook the berth, forcing Danielle to cover her ears against the grating noise.

Bumblebee sat up quickly after setting Danielle down on the floor. He held up a servo in a "stay here" motion before rushing out of the room.

"As if" she jeered, dashing out just before the huge door closed. Bee was running down the hall, charging his cannons. He flipped down his face mask.

She ran as fast as her green and purple ankle would carry her.

The volume of shouts increased as she drew nearer to the main hangar. Banking around the last turn, she careened to a stop and then back peddled hard. As she fought her own momentum to turn around, she lost her footing and ended up franticly crawling back behind the corner.

Peaking back around, she saw all the Autobots with face masks down, guns drawn. In front of them, she stared at the unknown robot standing in the hangar entrance, a smoking hole in the wall behind him.

He stood just taller than Ironhide, had deep metallic-blue plating with thin white stripes cutting an odd but nearly familiar design around him. He had two huge cannons that bulged all the way up his arms, possibly bigger than Ironhide's own cannons. Both were hot and nervously switching targets from Mirage, to Ratchet, to Bee, to Optimus, back to Mirage, then finally landing on Ironhide and Optimus. Standing rigid and still, locked in a tense stance with all guns on him, the metallic-blue-plated robot made neither a movement nor a sound.

Optimus was first to speak to the intruder.

"State your designation, rank, and purpose." he ordered.

"I do not have designation or rank, but my purpose was to seek shelter here. I heard about the battle in the city last month and that you all stayed nearby. I sought you out, Optimus Prime, for I wish to join your unit alliance against the Decepticons." His mid-baritone voice, though steely, had the lightest hint of southern drawl. He bent down on one knee and lowered his cannons, transforming them back to servos and holding them up in a surrendering motion.

Ironhide, never missing an opportunity, dove forward and wrapped his huge servo around the back of the intruder's neck. Cannon whirring as missiles rotated around it, he pressed the mouth of it against the side the other robots head.

"How did you find us?" he growled low, sounding more like a hungry lion than a machine.

The terrified robot stuttered "I-I..."

Ironhide shot a round into the floor just in front of the bent robot, which now knelt on both knees. It was close enough for them both to feel the heat wave bloom up from the new hole. "That's not an answer." he snarled.

Danielle made a mental note to never give 'Hide any reason to distrust her.

"I-I got it as a tip from another Cybertronian." he rushed through his words, nearly slurring them together. "He never gave me his name but said- well, h-he told me that I could find the Autobots here."

Unsatisfied with the answer, Ironhide snarled and pushed harder against the robots head with his cannon, forcing it to lean to the side. "What did this other frag look like?"

"I don't really know what his face looked like but his vehicle mode was some sort of little hybrid car, a green Toyota. Prius or something like that."

All the Bots froze as they searched the World Wide Web in their processors for what the car looked like.

Mirage scoffed, Bumblebee whirred in surprise, Optimus just looked puzzled, and Ironhide seemed indifferent.

"We don't know who you speak of, if he in fact exists." Optimus said slowly. "For this reason I cannot readily trust you I'm afraid."

In a COM link from Optimus to Ironhide and the other Bots: "There is no need to offline him but I do not want him to stay here. Ironhide, take him to the hangar door and tell him he has a three second chance to start running before you shoot to kill. The rest of you will also fire, but do not aim to directly hit."

Ironhide roughly pulled up on robots neck "Get up, punk." Once up, he shoved him towards the exit, keeping his cannon to the back of the trespasser's head and his free servo clamped on a shoulder. Yanking him to a stop, he gave the blue robot his warning.

"You have three seconds to get out of my sights before I offline you," his voice growling like wrath itself. He pushed the robot forward and started to count.

The blue robot didn't know what to do… He had failed his mission. He had to run for his life from the Autobots and back to Starscream where he would certainly have his spark throttled and cut out of him for failing.

"One." came a throaty growl from behind him.

But what did that matter now? He had nothing left. By the way these Bots had acted, he was certain that Danielle must be already dead…

"Two…" He heard weapons directly behind and farther back from him getting hot, ready to take him out. Maybe he should let them… But Danielle… He couldn't let fate have brought him all this way to have let her die alone, with no vengeance from a loved one. He would change that, right now.

Time slowed as his mind raced forward to each move that he would make; first taking out the black Bot behind him with a blast in the chest, then rush the close-by red one, shoot him, then the yellow bot, then the medical bot as he ran towards the Prime. That would be a battle all its own. He could feel the hated boiling inside of him, the anger spreading a thin red ring in his optics. Gears in his arms and servos had begun to shift when a piercing scream ignited the air in the hangar.

* * *

><p>It had taken her too long to realize the robot before her was the same color as her Raptor. When he had been down on his knees, she'd caught a glimpse of his optics and felt like she somehow knew them. When he was forced to walk away, she spotted the FORD symbol on his back and knew that it had to be him. Just as an emotional torrent of happiness, shock and relief twisted her heart, panic seized her entirely, stopping her breath when she heard Ironhide's threat.<p>

"NO!" she finally found her voice and threw herself out from behind the corner. Time seemed to stand still for her as she heard weapons being armed. With each step that she knew brought her closer to the Raptor, the distance only seemed to grow. Blood pounded in her ears as she tried to fly across the hangar, desperate to reach Ironhide and her Raptor before it was too late. She felt her lungs quake as another scream erupted from her, one she didn't even realize was her own until Ironhide turned and glared at her in furious shock.

She felt a smile start to break across her lips when the Raptor turned and looked at her straight in the eyes. It had to be him, she just _knew_ it _had to be_ him.

* * *

><p>It was him. He moved to duck around his captor to run to her, to sweep her up and hold her against him, to know he finally had his femme back.<p>

Before he could take his third step, he saw Danielle's face drop, her eyes growing wide and lips parting to cry out. The next thing he knew, a sharp pain exploded through his circuits as Ironhide made a connecting blow in the middle of the charging Raptor's back.

It knocked him flat on the ground, jarring his systems. The last thing he saw before offlining were the silent tears falling down Danielle's cheeks, her mouth open in what must have been a horrified scream. The pain was so evident on her face…

All he could concentrate on were the tears streaking down her beautiful face. The tears, and the yellow Bot scooping her up to hold her close to his chest, turning away to prevent her from seeing her fallen friend, and their enemy...


	8. Please Forgive Me

Danielle thrashed against Bee's chest, throwing her first against the solid metal, ignoring the trickle of blood that was beginning to drip down her arm from her still-unhealed hand.

"Put me down!" she screamed at him. She was ready to jump down if he hadn't lowered her to the floor when he finally did. She hit the ground running, literally. Her foot flew back behind her before the other one came forward, pitching her face towards the ground. She managed to catch herself with her hands, push herself up, and take a sprinter's start to the Raptor.

He was too still, too quiet. She could feel her heart being seared from the inside out, her lungs burning, chest becoming hollow with grief. The one that kept her safe for so many years was just… gone. A split second she was able to see him in his bipedal form, but in a weakened prisoner state, a captive. She knew he would have been much stronger, much more proud, had the circumstances been different.

She fell to her knees at his head, weeping at the tragedy. She never even got to say hello, much less goodbye. She folded her arms, resting them on the side of his head, with her forehead on her arms; and she sobbed. She didn't want to be seen like this but there was nothing she could do.

At her side, Ironhide stood awkwardly. He was angry at the robot for forcing him to react so violently, but in his own defense he thought it was making a break to attack Danielle. He had only meant to disarm the bot, not knock him into stasis. He had no idea that he rammed his servo so hard into his back. Scans showed that he was still alive but Danielle certainly didn't know that. He didn't want her to think he'd killed her friend.

Unsure how to start what he wanted to say, his processor flipped back and forth between apologies and explanations, all running together and coming out completely wrong. "Danielle I…" he shifted, trying to keep his solid façade. "He looked like he was going to attack you. I only meant to-"

The glare she gave him penetrated even his thickest mental armor. All his years of training could never have prepared him to face such a fuming organic, fueled by agony and ire. Her eyes burned like the hottest cannons, her mouth a dead-flat line grimacing at him. Her voice, rough and raw from screaming and crying, scraped against his spark like a rusty blade. "You…" she slowly stood to face him. "You did this. You _killed_ him." Her voice was as smooth as a missile's shell, armed and aimed. "He was just happy to see me and you _took it all away!_" She wasn't cognizant of her voice rising, yelling the end of her sentence, challenging him to tell her otherwise. But he didn't have to.

Ratchet stepped forward, picked up the emotional femme and carried her back to Bumblebee despite her trashing protests. "He's isn't dead, only in stasis lock. I can most likely repair him but it may take time." He dropped her gently into Bee's open servos. The yellow Bot had to juggle the human as she leapt and rolled over his palms and digits, trying desperately to get back to the floor and to her Raptor. With a pained look, and fearing for her safety, he finally boxed her in his servos, locking them together like a human child might do to contain some small critter in his hands that he didn't want to let get away.

Confused on what to do with his flailing possession, Bee looked to Optimus for guidance, as Ratchet had already turned to examine the Raptor.  
>Via COM link: "<em>Just… just get her out of here. Remaining here would only make matters worse. You may stay with her. She won't easily be kept still now," <em>he sighed.

Bee began walking back to his quarters, Ratchet ordering Mirage and Ironhide to help him transport the downed robot to the medical bay. He was quiet while he walked, his spark hurting after the scene that had unfolded.

She had looked so happy and relieved to see the Raptor. It hurt to think that she may hold affection for another. What was there to do about it though? It was her spark, he could not control who it cared for…

Reaching his quarters, he walked in and quickly shut the door behind him. He set Danielle down on his berth before turning around to lock his door, not that she could open it anyways.

When he turned back to face Danielle, she was standing rigid and glaring at him, her arms crossed over her chest.

He played a short radio clip, pained that he still couldn't speak; "_At your mercy, please forgive me."_

She closed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. "Take me back." she breathed. Bee's optics singed her heartstrings but she was almost too angry to care; almost. "I need to see him. Please Bee, I need to see him…" her voice cracked when she said his name. When he made no move, she helped herself down from his berth and ran underneath the metal night table that seemed part of the floor, wedging herself back against the wall where he couldn't reach her. She could hear him whirring in frustration at her actions but she was stubborn, if not irrational. She would stay there, starve herself if she had to, until they agreed to let her see her truck.

* * *

><p>"I didn't think I hit him that hard, it's not my problem that he's got a weak spine…" Ironhide grumbled mostly to himself, but Ratchet, who stood only a few feet from him over the Raptor's body, heard him.<p>

"It's not that he's weak, because he is not. Judging by his plating, he's still relatively young and exceptionally strong. But it seems like he has had some slightly shoddy custom work done on him. That resulted in a badly placed cable, which took the brunt of your fist, freezing up his systems.

Ironhide only snorted, but Mirage was curious. "Why would he have had work done on his spine? And what do you mean by sloppy _custom_ work?"

"It almost looks as if he's had some kind of recent upgrades, but I won't be able to discern what kind exactly until I can get him stable enough to fully scan all his systems," the medical Bot explained, quietly poking at the dent Ironhide had made.

"Would the _signora_ know how to, how the humans say, "pimp him out"? Would Cybertronian systems and build allow that kind of tampering by human mechanics?"

Ratchet was quiet for a moment, mulling over several factors that had just popped into his processor. "I think you may have hit on a very good point, Mirage." He turned and faced his red comrade as Ironhide and Optimus looked on, slightly bewildered. Mirage started to become shifty, nervous from the sudden attention.

Ratchet continued. "Humans, as far as we know, do not possess our technology, much less know how to manipulate it. There is no way that the upgrades I think I'm seeing were administered by a human. Danielle did not even know that her truck was Cybertronian, so it could not have been her. Whoever did this knows our technology, and how to control it.

* * *

><p>After over a month working on this mission, Starscream had finally made progress. The particles on the Raptor's metal had turned out to be just as he thought: Sulfuric acid. He'd researched the substance and found how deadly it could be against humans and metal alike. Not in its base form though. In order for it to be of any use to him, it had to be manipulated.<p>

This didn't take much doing however, for the substance's properties had a cruel tendency to mutate on contact with Cybertronian metal. The sulfuric corrosion on the Raptor had developed after its arrival to Earth at the beginning of the Cybertronian war. It was astonishing that the robot, so young and alone, had survived. Starscream had interrogated the Raptor during his stay on the Nemesis to find out his past. What he found almost made him want to believe in hope and good fortune. Almost.

The first obstacle the Raptor had to overcome once on Earth was escaping from where he'd landed: in an open boiling sulfur mine. His Cybertronian metal pulled the element to him like a magnet, coating his entire body in a thin layer of grainy powder.

The sulfur was benign until he started to move. The heat from his rubbing joints and mainly from his spark was enough to turn the element against him. But this process was slow and would not affect him until many years later. Before all those years had a chance to pass, the youngling managed to learn how to scan a passing vehicle to take up a disguise. That vehicle had been a Ford F-150 Raptor SVT.

He stayed out in the rural area near the mines for a year, waiting for a sign from any surviving Cybertronians, but none ever appeared.

A local old man found the truck sitting alone and abandoned in his field one morning and took him home. He recognized the sulfur corrosion and cleaned the truck inside and out, removing almost all of it. Unfortunately, due to his being a transformer with living metal that moved, there were surfaces in him that would not have existed in a factory-produced Raptor. This resulted in some acid remaining, mainly on his spark chamber.

When the old man passed away soon after, all his possessions were sold at the local church auction. Mr. Terrance, the father of three year old Danielle, bought the truck for $3,000, as the family station wagon was on its way out.

Mr. Terrance worked in carpentry and used the truck as his work vehicle, hauling wood and tools all over town.

Thirteen years later, the Raptor felt like part of a family again. Having gotten close to the father, he thought it was a good time to show what he really was.

While out in a work field one day, alone with Mr. Terrance, he'd transformed. The man, unfortunately, was sixty-two and had an undiagnosed widow maker in his heart. The shock and fear were too much and he had a heart attack. The Raptor put the human into the driver's seat and raced to the nearest hospital. It was too late by the time he arrived.

The hospital held onto the truck until Danielle, then sixteen, came to pick it up two weeks later. Her mother suffered terrible grief, to where she hardly ate, and even less so when she began to refuse to get out of bed. Six months later, her mother passed away. Doctors said she died of a broken heart.

With nowhere to go and no funds to go with, Danielle was forced to remain in the house with the truck. She sold the station wagon for grocery money before eventually getting a job.

The summer of her seventeenth year was the black mark on her youth, just before Jeramie, previously her childhood-long best friend, left for college.

Afraid of him coming back for her, she sold the house and fled the state with whatever belongings she could fit in the truck. She found a little house several states east, out in the country but still reasonably close to a city, where she'd resided ever since.

Unfortunately, this far east had significantly more moisture in the air. As he sat in Danielle's driveway in the heavy morning dew for four years, the base sulfur began to change again. The heavy contact with water reshaped the element into a weak acid.

As the years progressed, that acid ate farther and farther through the metal, wires, pipes, fans, axels, and everything else that made up the Raptor.

Even though the old man had cleaned every outer piece of metal, all the inner workings of the Cybertronian remained covered in sulfur. The damp air helped the corrosion grow again, attacking his circuits and joints the hardest. Eventually, such corrosion would lock all joints in place or eat through them entirely.

Having never seen sulfur corrosion before, neither Danielle nor the local mechanics knew what to do. They simply scrubbed off what they could reach with steel wool and charged Danielle for the labor.

At first, only his circuitry was going fuzzy. But then, as wires got worse, intake valves and compressors began to fail, causing the Raptor's cough and wheezing.

After only a year of residing there, there was significant enough corrosion to lock most of the necessary joints needed to transform. Now, three more years later, he was stuck. However, he wouldn't have transformed even if he could, afraid of killing the young women too. After four years of being in his vehicle mode, the Raptor had accepted the fact that he was just a truck.

Then came along the darkly-peppy Toyota Prius. What Starscream had scraped off of the Raptor was corroded metal and oxidized sulfur. When the Raptor onlined from a long deep recharge, he not only felt free and clean, but infinitely more powerful.

However, during the three days after the surgery, the Raptor still in recharge, Starscream had stayed busy. While cleaning, repairing, and virtually rebuilding the Raptor, he was careful not to further damage the corroded parts. He was saving them for an experiment: for active testing on another Cybertronian.

In a back bunker of the ship, locked in on all sides by several impenetrable layers of the densest metals, and restrained to those same walls in stasis lock, was Jazz.

* * *

><p>Bee rammed his servo into his face. How could he have been so foolish for not somehow restraining the femme? He had tried several different ways of removing the bedside table but, anything short of shooting it, it was not going to move.<p>

So he sat down on the floor next to the table and leaned against the edge of the berth.

He heat-scanned the table, allowing him to look through it and see Danielle's heat marker, a glowing shifting red and yellow form curled up against the wall.

He wanted to tell her everything would be ok, that her Raptor would survive. But he wanted her first to know that he cared for her, that he wanted to help her no matter what she asked of him. He didn't know what else to do so he lined up sound bites from the radio. He just hoped it would make sense to her.

_ "I'm gonna need you to try to follow along  
><em>_I did the best that I could to try to write you songs."_

Static.

_ "Words can't express the  
><em>_Impact you've made on me,"_

Buzzing.

_ "In fields where nothing grew but weeds,  
><em>_I found a flower at my feet,  
><em>_bending there in my direction,  
><em>_I wrapped a hand around its stem,  
><em>_I pulled until the roots gave in,  
><em>_Finding there what I'd been missing,_

_ All because of you,  
><em>_I haven't slept in so long.  
><em>_When I do I dream of drowning in the ocean,  
><em>_Longing for the shore where I can lay my head down,  
><em>_I'll follow your voice,  
><em>_All you have to do is shout it out."_

Static pops again.

_ "I would kill for a chance to drive  
><em>_Get so far away from here with you my dear  
><em>_That I'll never leave your side  
><em>_Nobody knows the troubles I've seen"_

Static.

"_Days go on forever  
><em>_But I have not left your side  
><em>_We can chase the dark together  
><em>_If you go then so will I."_

The songs flowed together now seamlessly.

_ "I've gone crazy  
><em>_Cause there are things in the streets I don't believe  
><em>_So we'll pretend it's alright and stay in for the night  
><em>_What a world  
><em>_I'll keep you safe here with me_

_ I said I'd never let you go, and I never did  
><em>_I said I'd never let you fall and I always meant it  
><em>_If you didn't have this chance then I never did  
><em>_You'll always find me right there, again."_

_ "I won't leave and let you fall behind  
><em>_Live for the dying  
><em>_Heaven hear me  
><em>_I know we can make it out alive"_

_ "__I live for those I lost along the way"_

_ "The fighting never ends  
><em>_I can't face the dark without you."_

Soft static filled the quiet room before fading away. Bee had offlined his optics towards the beginning of his explanation. Now, he sat with his head bowed forward looking down at his empty servos that laid palm-up in his lap. The feeling of vulnerability was quite strong; it left him feeling like telling the femme what he felt had been a huge mistake. She hadn't made a sound since he started with the radio clips, and now he felt stupid for thinking he could be open and honest with a human.

He sighed, frustrated, making his gears whir. He was thinking about just getting up and leaving when Danielle finally crawled out from under the table. He didn't notice her until she climbed up on top of his upper leg and into his open servo. She sat down right in the middle of it, not looking up at him, and drew slow circles on the metal with her fingertip.

Her body seemed somewhat tense, so he didn't lift her up like he wanted to. He didn't know how he was supposed to react so he just sat there staring at the young woman as she continued to tickle his palm with her touch.

"Bumblebee… That was… beautiful. Even though it was all songs, I think I know what you meant. No one's ever said anything like that to me before… I… Thank you Bee, you really mean a lot to me too. I promise not to leave your side, no matter what happens." He looked down at her, smiling on the inside, and ever so gently brushed her back with a digit. She turned and hugged it, pressing herself against it, and planted a small kiss on it, as light as a butterfly wing brushing against his digit, almost too soft to feel.

Leaning against it, she sighed. "I just… I wish you were my size, or I was your size." She continued to draw slow lazy circles against the side of his digit. That was when he remembered the software Ratchet had given him an upgrade for. He'd been told not to use it except in emergencies, but this situation felt like a good enough excuse to be an "emergency".

He beeped and buzzed in sudden excitement, his optics growing brighter. Danielle looked up at him, bewildered by his sudden burst of jubilation. He set her down by the table before standing up. He transformed down into the Camaro and backed up just under the berth. Turning off his engine, Danielle walked over to the passenger door, her head cocked to the side, and tried to open it. It was locked.

"Oh come on Bee, don't mess around. That's not cool man. C'mon BumblebeeEEE!" She squealed when all of a sudden two strong but unrestrictive arms wrapped gingerly around her waist from behind. The warmth against her back was incredible but she didn't understand what was going on.

She placed her hand on the forearms around her, feeling like that would give her some sort of control of the situation. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd last seen a real-live human being. Mirage had been what he called a "hologram" and the snobby people at the fancy downtown shopping center didn't count as human beings to her.

The word hit her square in the forehead. A hologram. But these arms felt real enough, though she hadn't touched Mirage, but he _had_ carried some of her stuff.

"Are you just going to stand there or are you going to turn around?" came a ringing mid-baritone chuckle. It sounded relatively young, like a man in his early twenties or so.

With not much of any other options, she pulled her arms to her chest, slowly shifted her feet and turned around in the man's arms. She was afraid to look up, not knowing what to expect. The close proximity to the man, and the idea that it could be Bumblebee holding her, freed a flock of butterflies throughout her stomach.

"I never took you for one so shy, Danielle." He laughed lightly again, the sound reverberating in her ears like bells. Then it became more serious, "Am I stepping too fast? Have I frightened you? Forgive me Danielle, I am wrong for-" He had begun to step back and pull his arms away when she finally came to her senses and found her voice.

All she had to do was lay her hands on his arms and he froze. "No, I uh… No, you're not moving too fast. It just… It's been a weird day and after everything you said before, it just sort of… It threw me off, you kn…?" She trailed off as she finally looked up at him. Her heart, along with her breathing, all but stopped in that moment.

In front of her stood a gorgeous blond male with eyes as deep as the Caribbean Seas. His skin was warm and toned but still light. His hair wisped down to just above his ears and eyebrows. His lips were full and well formed, tempting. Very tempting.

That's when she became aware of how he wasn't just standing in front of her, but was holding her. Though still leaving an inch or so between them, he had stepped back towards her when she'd stopped him from pulling away.

She realized she was gawking when he smiled at her, his mouth rolling into an adorable sideways grin. She couldn't help but giggle and smile back.

She could feel his hand drawing small circles in her back, just as she had done to Bee's servo. Her grin widened and she ducked her head as she felt her cheeks getting hot.

He leaned back some and lifted her face up with one curled finger under her chin. His smile made her want to melt into a puddle on the floor.

"Again, I never took you for such a shy femme. Especially for someone who can boldly shoot down Ironhide's cannon. Are you sure I haven't scared you?" he asked teasingly. She shook her head, unable to lessen the stupid smile enveloping her face. She tried to look away but he nudged her face back towards his.

The butterfly wings in her stomach seemed to triple in size when she realized how close their faces were. She found herself unable to breathe again.

"No… You didn't scare me. So… You really are Bumblebee?" He nodded. "I'm glad you can nod; now you don't have to flash your lights at me anymore." He stuck his tongue out at her as the lights of the Camaro beside her flashed twice, lighting up the room.

"Yes, it is still me, Bumblebee; The same one who played all those songs, trying to make you understand my feelings for you." His tone, just moments ago jovial, now took on a more heavy tone. He looked straight into her eyes, wanting to pull her closer, run a hand down her arm, brush a pesky strand of hair from her face, but was afraid he would scare her, push the limits too far and break the whole thing. So he simply stood there, his arms around her waist, and waited for her to make the next move or at least give him the "go ahead".

"With all those, what are they called? Lyrics? Yes, with all those lyrics, I was trying to tell you that you've really caught my spark. I don't know what it is about you but something inside me never wants to let go of you or leave your side. I hate to see you hurt. When Ironhide felled your Raptor, you looked so… Heartbroken. Then when you fought against me, I thought you hated me. I felt like my spark was going to give way and extinguish itself. I just… I don't know."

"I know, and I'm really sorry Bee, I really wish I hadn't thrown such a fit out there. But I was upset, I thought 'Hide had killed him. I just… I don't know either…"

She finally decided enough was enough. She leaned into his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in the crook of his warm neck. At first, he was rigid and didn't move. A moment later though, all the rigidity fell from his body and his taught muscles softened. His arms tightened around her, one around her waist and the other along her back, his hand resting between her shoulder blades, holding her closer to him, pulling her into his embrace. He continued to rub small circles into the small of her back.

She felt secure in his arms, like everything would be ok, no more pain and fear. However, the man still made her incredibly nervous. She had never been the best at expressing romantic feelings, and certain events had only worsened that by tenfold. As long ago as that had been, she still felt its quaking aftershocks four years later.

_"But Bee isn't Jeramie,"_ she told herself sternly. _"He would never do that to me."_ She reflexively had tightened her grip around his neck so he held her tighter, feeling like this was the "go ahead" signal he'd been waiting for.

He kissed her hair then leaned back to see her face. He raised his hand and gently placed his palm on her cheek, fingers in her long hair. He had expected to see her smiling or still blushing but her composure had changed.

"What is wrong?" he asked, concern filling his voice and clouding his face.

"Oh it's nothing Bee, don't worry about it. I was just... being silly. Ignore it." She gave him a reassuring smile, as reassuring as she could muster.

His hand trailed down her hair to her shoulder, making its way down her arm, feeling like a warm feather flitting over her skin. "I can't help but to worry about you. You're so… fragile." He reached her hand and seemed to ask permission by only resting two fingers on the back of it. His face radiated that youthful nervous look of a high school boy on his first date. She barely managed to stifle a giggle at the thought. She turned her hand sideways, smiling at him, and he slipped his fingers in between hers.

She'd half expected her hand to be engulfed by his but it was normal size, and fit perfectly around hers.

An electric current radiated from their joined hands, making both of them smile goofishly. He pulled her as close to him as physically possible. He turned their bodies so that he could lean back on the hood of the Camaro, and she could lean into him. He looked down at her, their eyes connecting. He could feel her body almost vibrate as he closed the space between their faces, resting his forehead and nose against hers. Looking deeper into hers, he thought he saw apprehension.

Her heart felt like it would pound right out her chest, carried along by the giant butterflies in her stomach. She was nervous but she wanted to kiss him so badly. She couldn't say she "loved" him yet, but she could see her heart's path leading there sooner or later.

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath before opening them again to look at her. He smiled softly before raising his lips to the tip of her nose and planted a quick kiss. He pulled her close again and gently squeezed her hand. She squeezed back before letting out a small sigh of her own, closing her eyes, and leaning into him.

They sat there against the hood, not talking, just enjoying the peaceful empty room. The Camaro's radio came to life, the volume rising softly as a song began to play in the background.

* * *

><p>After all the tension in the medical bay, Ratchet decided that Ironhide and his guns were better off elsewhere and sternly requested his absence. Now, as Ironhide walked back to the main hangar to try to fix the holes he had blasted into the floor, soft treble caught his audio receptors; it emanated from behind Bee's door.<p>

_"I hope you never lose your sense of wonder…"_

Walking up to it, he reached for the handle but found it locked. Narrowing his optics in bewilderment, he activated a live scan of the room through the door. Heat sensors found the girl swaying back and forth seemingly by herself, her arms up and out in front of her, head hanging forward, seemingly resting on something.

_ "Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance…"_

Then he saw the Camaro on the floor, which struck his as odd. Finally he realized that Bee must be using his hologram to slow dance with the femme.

He knew that Ratchet had given them all hologram software for emergencies only. If he found out Bee was using it like this, he'd blow a circuit. But Ironhide knew what Bee was feeling, so he was not going to be the one to ruin it for him. He smiled, listening to the music, before turning and walking quietly away. The two deserved some peace.

_ "I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance.  
><em>_Never settle for the path of least resistance.  
><em>_Living might mean taking chances,  
><em>_But they're worth taking.  
><em>_Lovin' might be a mistake,  
><em>_But it's worth making._

_ Don't let some hell bent heart  
><em>_Leave you bitter.  
><em>_When you come close to selling out,  
><em>_Reconsider.  
><em>_Give the heavens above  
><em>_More than just a passing glance.  
><em>_And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance,_

_ I hope you dance _(Time is a real and constant motion always)_  
><em>

_ I hope you dance _(Rolling us along)_  
><em>

_ I hope you dance _(Tell me, who wants to look back on their youth and wonder)_  
><em>

_ I hope you dance (Wh_ere those years have gone)"_  
><em>

* * *

><p><em><strong>Lyrics:<strong>_

_Please Forgive Me_ – Crabb Family

_Downfall of Us All_ – A Day to Remember

_A Second Glance_ – A Day to Remember

_The Good Left Undone_ – Rise Against

_Monument_ – A Day to Remember

_Anthem of the Angels_ – Breaking Benjamin

_Have Faith in Me_ – A Day to Remember

_Into the Nothing _– Breaking Benjamin

_Fade Away _– Breaking Benjamin

_Without You _– Breaking Benjamin

_I'm Made of Wax _– A Day to Remember

_I Hope You Dance _– Leeann Womack


	9. Commence Combat

_At an Earlier Time:_

The silver Autobot had sat in stasis lock for a month and a half, while the Raptor was onboard being "fixed" by Starscream. Now, Jazz was laid out on a surgical gurney next to the blue bot, still in the very low power state. Because this delicate procedure involved replacing good parts with frail crumbling ones, Starscream was aided by Scalpel, the Decepticon's best medical bot.

Starscream had kept everything that had been pulled out of Raptor, including the shavings of oxidized sulfuric buildup. Now, he wanted to know how the substance mutated on a live Cybertronian, and how to make its spread advance at a faster pace. If he could figure out how to turn the corrosion into a weapon, he would add it to the Raptor's arsenal.

He started first with replacing sections of the Autobot's main energon lines. Next to be fixed were various wires, vents, and compressors. Two pistons of the eight in the engine were replaced with corroded, immovable ones. Once the inner-most parts were replaced, they swapped a few panels on Jazzes chest plates, face plates, and cannons.

By the end of the procedure, the Autobot looked positively dreadful. It would shock Starscream if he was able to function at all, provided he could even be brought out of stasis lock first.

Miraculously but eventually, Scalpel had the Bot online but groggy, miserable, and quite pissed too. He had been returned to the back chamber of the ship, restrained to the wall. He had to be, for it was dangerous to let the Bot be free to wander his cell, giving him a glimmer of hope.

Jazz was monitored and regularly tested to see how his vitals were reacting to the spreading sulfuric acid corrosion. Various parts of him were also experimented on.

In places where there wasn't significant enough corrosion, not enough to Starscream's liking, they were put through trials to see what would make it grow faster or more aggressively.

First they cleaned Jazzes right arm of all foreign matter, except for the corrosion. Then they subjected the metal and sulfur to bare flames. When the fire seemed have no effect, the heat was amplified using various unidentified machines that spit concentrated heat on Jazzes arm. He tried to hold in agonized screams at first, to hold on to his Autobot dignity, but eventually the searing metal overrode his pride and he cried out in terrible pain. This, of course, only made Starscream smirk with sick joy.

_Conclusion of fire and heat: no effect other than to weaken the substance._

The next trial, tested just twenty minutes after the heat, was ice. Modified Cryofreeze cannons were aimed at all angles towards Jazzes left arm. The experiment had to be cut short or Jazz would have offlined too soon as a main energon line was frozen solid, blocking the circulation. He would have fallen back into stasis had the heat cannons not been brought out again to thaw the lines. This resulted in cracked armor plates and splintered hoses from being frozen then immediately superheated. Jazz felt his processor trying to pound out of his head while his spark barely even throbbed in his chest.

_Conclusion of ice: inconclusive; must be rerun at a later time._

With the possibility of the sulfuric corrosion having been corrupted, Jazzes arms were removed to preserve the purity of the corrosive acid elsewhere on his body.

Starscream remembered how the truck had explained the worsening of the buildup when he'd moved east and been subjected to more moisture. So the next experiment was to pipe in water and run it through the Bot's body.

Jazz wanted to curse throughout the ordeal but the corrosion had eaten holes into wires, allowing water to seep in and short circuit some systems. Sparks burst from his chest and shoulders, tendrils of smoke drifting up from the exposed wires. The water was later stopped and drained from the room.

When Scalpel entered to examine the experiment and any damage it had incurred, he found that he could not get near the sparking Bot. The force of the water had ripped some corroded wires in half and now an electric current ran through all of Jazzes metal. The sparks ignited some materials on a main energon line in Jazzes chest, quickly eating a hole through it. Immediately his life-blood oozed out onto his chest, sliding down the metal to the floor.

Normally it should have been a green color, but as it contacted the sulfur corrosion, it converted into a sickly blue-orange. As Jazz lay dying, Scalpel ran around him, documenting the variables. Eventually the line clotted and the ooze became barely a trickle. Where the energon dried, it was a crusty orange with blue flakes on the very edges, closest to the corrosion.

Starscream was elated by this advancement in their experiment. The reaction of the blood to the sulfur was incredible. Now, they just needed to wait to see if it sped up the corrosion process or killed the Bot, whichever came first.

* * *

><p><em><span>Present Day:<span>_

Ratchet had spent nearly twelve hours repairing the badly damaged Raptor, and then spent another eight running every systems-scan that he knew of on him. The main processor unit seemed normal to a shallow basic scan, but as Ratchet probed deeper, he found more and more connections, files, systems, software, and even hardware that he did not recognize. Many of the connections he tried to open or software he tried to access were guarded by heavy firewalls and extreme encryption coding.

Frustrated by not getting anywhere with the strange upgrades, Ratchet finally gave up for the night with trying to figure out the peculiar systems. He returned to examining the physical renovations to the bot's frame and metals, mainly to its weapons. Other than on Ironhide, he'd never seen so many heavy-duty artillery rounds on one weaponry chain. If their new visitor turned out to be loyal to the Autobots, he would make a very useful ally. If not, he could be quite a fearsome opponent.

There was only one way to find out, and tomorrow morning, when Ratchet planned to bring him back online, would be the true tell.

* * *

><p>Ironhide and Bumblebee sat in the hangar, enjoying the early quietness of the morning before the others woke from recharge. Ironhide was a naturally early riser but Bee just couldn't recharge anymore so he'd laid Danielle down on her cot and left his quarters.<p>

They had only sat there, content with the silence, until Ironhide broke the quiet first.

He snorted a laugh at an internal thought before finally speaking. "So you've taken quite an affection for the femme, haven't you?"

Bee looked at him, startled, and shook his head franticly. 'Hide didn't particularly care for humans, so Bee couldn't see him understanding his feelings for Danielle. If all else failed, he had to just flat out deny it to keep the peace.

"Oh come on now Bumblebee. I heard that sappy music you were playin' last week, and I saw you holdin' her tight. With your holoform." He leaned forward, as if to chastise him for being so careless, but only broke a cocky smile. Bee didn't know what to say. He hadn't thought they'd been caught, but what now? Had 'Hide told Ratchet or Optimus that he'd broken the rule? He fidgeted where he sat, not sure what his comrade was getting at.

"Look, you know I don't much like humans, especially the femmes with all their emotions and whatnot, but if your spark holds favor for Danielle, then that is your right. Believe it or not, I once was your age and, though I chased someone of the same race as us, I still went through the game of want and desire for a femme. Just be careful. She is human, and her kind is easily, well… they aren't exactly the sturdiest when it comes to war. If you get attached to her, be ready to let her go at a moment's notice." He stopped talking to study Bee's reaction to his words. He'd deny it till the bitter end but he cared for the young Bot almost like a son. He didn't want the kid to think he'd found a spark-mate only to have her ripped away before his very optics, as war had a nasty tendency to do that.

Bee had been staring at him intently, but as the words sunk in, he looked down and around, knowing how right 'Hide was. He cared for the femme quite a lot, and would rather have his spark ripped slowly from his chest by Megatron than lose her. He also knew how bad of a thing that was to wager against himself. Caring for her so much also opened him wide to weakness.

Via COM link to 'Hide: _"Yes, I do care for the femme. I don't know why but I feel like it is my duty to protect her. I hate seeing her upset, like when you attacked her Raptor."_

Ironhide leaned his head to the side into his servo and pinched the bridge of his nose. "That was an accident… How many times must I explain this to everyone?" he grumbled low, huffing smoke out his nose in irritation.

_"No, no, I know it wasn't your fault. In all honesty…"_ he trailed off, rethinking his words. _"Will you keep a secret Ironhide? I mean it, I don't want the others to know."_ Ironhide sat up straight again and nodded his head. At the mention of secrets, he responded via the COM link this time.

_"Of course. I'm all ears, you know that. My mouth only opens to insult Decepticons."_

Despite the attempt at light humor, Bee only nodded curtly. _"Thank you, 'Hide. In all honesty, when you struck down Raptor, I was indifferent to it as I didn't know just who he was. But now, with the knowledge that he was similar to a guardian for Danielle, I see the event in an altered way. Because she is close to him, I feel threatened by him. Looking back, I want to thank you for knocking his systems out like that."_ Bee looked up and met 'Hide's optics with a tiny smile alight in his own. But then he looked away and shook his head before holding it in both of his servos.

_"I am horrible for thinking that, and I hate that I feel that way. But there is just something about him that I do not like. It is more than just the fact that he's held Danielle's spark for so long. I cannot bring myself to trust him. Am I awful for feeling this way 'Hide? Is it wrong to wish that you'd have hit him harder?"_ He looked up again, still holding his head in his hands though.

It was a shock that threw Ironhide's circuits for a whirl. He'd never known the yellow Bot to favor violence, especially deliberate infliction of it upon another. He didn't know how to start to answer the kid. But he had to try or Bee might think he really did have something wrong with him.

_"No, it's not wrong to wish that. I understand quite exactly where you're coming from. I don't like him either, and for similar reasons. But your reasons are the ones in question right now, and I tell you truthfully, you are in no way wrong to think like that."_ A wash of relief swept through Bee's processor, the tide visible on his face plates.

_"It is true that he _was _her guardian. But now that is over. You are much more skilled and capable than that scrap heap, and she should know that. However, it is up to _her_ to choose who she wishes to have as guardian. You cannot force her to trust you with her life, nor can you make her forget all the time she has resided with him. In this sense, yes, Raptor is, in essence, a threat to you. This can be solved quickly, or it may drag out into a full scale war if you let it. Hell, I've seen guardianship battles lead to crushed and extinguished sparks. I hope to Primus this doesn't lead to that but, should it, know that I am always on your side."_

Bee still looked anxious about this whole new ordeal, and he had every reason to be, but he wasn't alone in this battle. Ironhide offered his servo out to Bumblebee. _"Remember, I AM on your side. If you ever need me to burn the playing field to lessen the competition, I can help you with that. Or… If you're not feeling as violent as that, I am always here for you to talk to, be it just to vent or to plot fiery painful revenge against a sinister enemy."_ At Bee's skeptical look, Ironhide put a damper on his wish to blow stuff up and simply restated his main point out loud, "Or if you just need someone to talk to, I'm always here for ya kid."

Bee whirred in delighted acceptance and clasped 'Hide's servo in a shake. They had just let go and leaned back to rest again when Optimus, followed by Ratchet entered the main hangar from the hallway.

"Well aren't you up early Bumblebee? A decent surprise." Optimus joked at him. Ratchet had never looked worse. His plates were filthy with oil, dirt, and what looked like spilt energon.

Ironhide never missed a chance to poke fun at his old friend, "Long night or bad morning, Ratch?" A perturbed snarl was all the response he got, and 'Hides deep, gruff and rare laugh filled the room, bounding off the walls. Even Optimus had to hold back a chortle, hiding it with a cough.

The jocular moment was cut short by a nervously-fidgeting Mirage entering the hangar. "Sir, he's a-awake sir. I tried to convince him to remain in the medical bay but he didn't want to." He shifted from pede to pede, unable to get what he knew off his processor, the very same information that he thought had cost both Jazz and Bee their sparks, thought it turned out to be only Jazz.

Ratchet didn't understand why the Bot was so upset. After all, Ratchet had been the one to bring Raptor back online. He just had to wait for the bot to rise up on his own accord and find them. He'd left a blueprint of the main areas of the base for him, providing just enough information to find his way from the medical bay to the main hangar.

"Cool your circuits Mirage, he was supposed to wake up and walk around. I would expect him to want to after having been out so long."

A new voice broke in from the hallway behind Mirage, making him jump nearly out of his plates. The voice was young, higher than Bumblebee's. "It does feel great to be walkin' again." Raptor walked in and stood where Mirage had been, who now stood next to Ironhide. "Thank you for repairin' me and taking me in."

Ironhide spoke up, despite being acutely aware that Optimus was about to say something too. "Don't get used to the hospitality, punk. You still have not proven your purpose for being here. You were fixed because, being Autobots, we are obliged to fix what we _may have_ unjustly damaged." He stood up to face the new bot, standing up straight and holding himself to flaunt his guns and missiles most prominently. "However, if you screw up even the slightest bit, I will do more than just damage you. Especially since we all now know your weak point."

Raptor looked nervous, intimidated by the mountain of a munitions specialist and his threat. But when Ratchet spoke up between sips of energon, his fear settled. "No, I fixed that 'Hide." Raptor had to keep a tight control of his face plates and body to keep from revealing how smug he felt at the moment.

Ironhide wanted to blast a hole through Ratchets face, or at the very least insult him for being so foolish as to not only repair but to reinforce a possible enemy. But he knew better than to get on the cranky medical Bot's nerves when he woke up in such a bad mood. He simply snorted and stared Raptor down. "I don't need your weak spine to offline you. I have many more resources than just my fists." He growled as missiles spun around his cannon.

Tired of, and almost embarrassed by, his comrade's rude manners, Optimus finally spoke up. "Please, excuse Ironhide's remarks. He is right only in that we do not know you so cannot forthrightly trust you. But I believe that you have a good spark for seeking us out to join our cause against the Decepticons. For that, I respect you as a soldier and hope that we may build a bond enough to have you on our team."

"I am grateful for your kindness, Optimus Prime." He bowed his head in recognition of the honorable Autobot, even though the gratitude was just as fake as the honor.

Bumblebee, who had previously been sitting with his back to the new bot, turned around at a "heads up" COM link from Ironhide who was facing the hallway where Raptor stood at the entrance of.

A bleary-eyed Danielle shuffled forward, nearly running into the back of Raptors pede as she walked forward.

"Ah, dude, sorry. Didn't see ya thur…" she slurred sleepily. Bee put out his arm for her to climb up on his servo. A cute morning-tired smile spread across her face as she saw the blot of yellow reaching towards her.

"Hey Bee, goodmornin'," she cooed, hugging his thumb as tight as her awkwardly weak arms would let her. Bee couldn't help but look up and glare smugly at the puzzled, and guardedly fuming, Raptor. He held her close to his chest, knowing how much she enjoyed the heat put off by his spark. She leaned against it and smiled before yawning.

The other Bots had picked up on the awkward tension between Bee and Raptor. They sat, Mirage twitching thinking "He's gonna kill us. He's a'gonna kill us." None of the Cybertronians knew what to say or do to break the uncomfortable silence.

Raptor finally spoke up, a light country accent breaking through. "Well'ello there darlin', ain't you just a pretty little ray o' sunshine." His mouth plates lifted in a smile when Danielle turned to the unfamiliar voice. She saw him, rubbed her eyes, then let out a bubbly little yip of surprised happiness.

Upon realizing the country bot was her Raptor, she looked up at Bee with big, jubilant, pleading eyes. "Let me down! Oh my gosh! I can't believe it!" she rushed through her words as Bee reluctantly set his servo down on the floor to let her off. "You really are alive! Thank the good Lord!" None of the Autobots had ever heard her with a county accent, but it seemed to pop up when she was around her like-tongued friend. She ran to him and he scooped her up, his engine revving softly as he held her up to optic level.

She seemed sound enough, although scans revealed a lacerated hand and swollen ankle that looked too sprained for her to even be able to walk on. But he knew about her condition with pain, he knew it didn't bother her. Other than those two things though, she seemed as healthy as a horse.

He bent his head down to study his little femme while he held her close to his chest plates. He cast a sidelong glance at the Bumblebee. As smitten as she may have seemed with the other Bot, she had never looked happier in her whole life to see her own Raptor standing before her. Now it was his turn to throw the dirty and smug look. He even received a bonus: the yellow Bot looked to be absolutely furious but defeated at the same time.

This was the start of the war.


	10. Change of Plans

_At an Earlier Time:_

Shortly after the water had been pumped over and through Jazz's chest, the energon lines had leaked and spilled his life-blood over him. All the trauma from the wicked, sick, and excruciatingly painful experiments, coupled with the major loss of energon, pushed Jazz back into stasis lock. No matter what Scalpel tried, he could not bring the Bot's processor back online.

But that didn't matter to Starscream now. The reaction between sulfur and the Cybertronian's blood was exactly the breakthrough he'd been searching for. As hours passed, the sulfur corrosion that had come in contact with Jazz's blood grew exponentially, eating through the formerly-solid metal plating.

The successful experiments resulted in the discovery of how to turn the sulfuric acid into a quick-spreading infection, without a cure.

The same day, Starscream returned to where the Raptor had been immersed in the sulfur mine when he'd landed on Earth. Much of the raw sulfur was to be gathered and taken onboard the Nemesis, much to Megatron's displeasure. But with the potentially groundbreaking knowledge, the head Decepticon was able to mostly ignore the lethal matter.

Starscream quickly developed modified cannon rounds that held pure sulfuric acid. The final functioning weapon was taken to Jazz's bunker. Starscream was disappointed that his little experiment was not going to be online to feel this, to please his audio receptors with groans of agony, but he could make do with the simple fact that he held an Autobot hostage and helpless. The cannon was set up directly in front of the pathetic frag.

The ammunition of the weapon was a hollow-point cannon round filled with sulfuric acid. On impact, the round blast would explode like a weaker normal round would, causing enough damage to expose wires and main lines. Once detonated, the acid inside would cast off onto the target, allowing the modified acid to spread quickly within the now-permeable energon lines. The corrosion becomes significant enough to hinder circuitry and circulation performance within six hours, doubling its damage every five hours by traveling in the main energon lines to the rest of the body. In less than forty eight hours, the target would be nothing but ambiguous scrap metal and dust.

Once the cannon was hot and ready to aim, Starscream pulled the trigger and the sulfur round exploded on Jazz's chest plates, exposing his spark chamber and many of his internal hoses and lines. The acid quickly ate its way along his insides, corroding and clogging every hose that connected with the main energon line. Starscream and Scalpel smiled at their great achievement and left the dying Bot's bunker triumphantly.

Twenty four hours later, they returned to check on their little experiment to find no spark pulse whatsoever. The metal was completely gray and lackluster underneath the orange and blue sulfur oxidization. Many of the plates had collapsed and crumbled into a dust that littered the floor around Jazz's skeletal remains.

Within another twenty four hours, that was all that would remain of him: nothing but gray dust on the floor.

After that, Starscream affixed the new cannons to the Raptor, marveling at his wonderful creation.

* * *

><p><em><span>Present Day:<span>_

The day passed nearly uneventfully, with exception of the passive-aggressive bouts of antagonism between Bumblebee and Raptor over Danielle.

After the whole thing started with Bee giving Raptor a dirty glare when Danielle went right to him in the morning, the Raptor had thrown one right back when she left Bee for him.

After that, Danielle had gotten up to go grab some food from her room and Bee immediately got up and offered to carry her there. Raptor had stood up at the same time and offered her the same thing. With a stinging side-glance, Bee simply played "Sorr'uh cowboy, I know the way 'round these here parts better than you eve' will, son." Bee felt like he won two points with that, having both been very right and insulting the Raptor in his own country slang. He walked away with a slightly confused but otherwise oblivious Danielle in the palm of his servo.

Bee- 2, Raptor- 0.

After all the morning business had been taken care of, Optimus had scheduled a target practice for everyone. All the Bots had a predesigned target to aim at, but an improvised one was set up for the Raptor at the end of the line. Right next to Bee's.

They all began firing and the noise was nearly deafening for Danielle, but Ratchet had given her two small pieces of foam padding to use as ear plugs, allowing her to stand next to Bee as he practiced. He fired his rounds, one after the other, almost managing to fit each round through the same hole that had formerly been the bull's-eye. One point for Bee.

Before Raptor fired, he backed up fifty feet farther from the target. Refusing to be shown up, he did the same as Bumblebee, but through a smaller hole. Two points for Raptor. Unfortunately, his bullet hole was three rings out from the bull's-eyes. Minus one point.

Bee laughed at the only slightly fuming Raptor before nabbing Danielle's attention again. He made her step back about ten feet before blaring a song from his radio. He starting to bounce back and forth like a fighter getting ready to box, servos clenched in front of him.

"_Put up your dukes, let's get down to it."_

He crouched down, twisting his torso side to side, and threw three or four insanely fast upper cuts into the air.

"_Hit me with your best shot."_

He fired a quick cannon round before spinning in a tight bouncing circle and firing again, just barely shaving a hair off his previous hole.

"_Why don't you hit me with your best shot?"_

He spun around the opposite way, kicking a leg out into the air before stomping it back down in front of him when he was facing the target. He fired two rounds that went straight through the hole.

"_Hit me with your best shot!"_

He spun again but stopped with his back to the target and fired again, putting a half-circle on the bottom of the previous bullet hole.

"_Fire away!"_

He looked down and winked at Danielle before firing seven rounds into the target. Danielle burst out laughing when she realized he'd shot a smiley face into the target. All the rounds while he was dancing had formed the hole for the nose. Now, there were two "eyes" and then five holes that were almost perfectly arched in a "smile", if not a tad bit sideways. But the lopsided smile reminded her of Bee's hologram's smile. Between Bee's antics and the thought of him smiling and holding her, she couldn't stop herself from giggling.

Three points for Bee.

The yellow Bot was starting to annoy him, but Raptor wasn't about to let that get in his way. He supercharged his cannon, aimed, and fired. The round looped and skittered in the air before finally striking the target dead on. The resulting explosion was enough to nearly knock Danielle off her feet and catch the attention of Optimus, Mirage, and especially a slightly impressed Ironhide. Once the black smoke cleared, all that was left of the target was a single stake of splintered and burning wood jutting up from the ground.

Danielle jumped up and down, cheering and clapping. Bee glowered at what little remained of the target, trying to look unimpressed.

Five points for Raptor.

Bee – 6, Raptor – 6.

After what Ironhide had seen Raptor pull off with his cannon in a single round, he now itched to see more. Walking over to Raptor, he sized him up. Both bots were relatively similar in build and structure, though Hide was slightly shorter and broader.

Picking up on the black Bot's studious gaze, Raptor turned to him and cocked his head slightly, as if to say "Can I help you?"

Ironhide wanted to see what all this bot could do. "You got yourself some pretty fraggin powerful cannons there. But firepower isn't everything, I would know. You up to a servo-to-servo dual against me?"

Raptor now understood the looks he'd been getting from 'Hide and did the same to his competitor. He could comprehend the difficulty that the weapons specialist may provide, but he didn't think the Bot would be any match against his own skills.

Raptor nodded and 'Hide motioned for him to follow into the open field next to the firing range which butted up against the back of the main hangar. Everyone else followed, including a worried Danielle and Ratchet, both muttering "Don't you remember what happened last time you fought with your hands/servos…?" Reaching the center of it first, Ironhide turned to face his opponent with more than just a little excitement. Raptor halted fifteen feet from Hide and took up a fighter's stance, knees bent, one arm out in front of him across his chest, the other hung down and bent at the elbow, servo clenched in a ready punch.

'Hide made the 'come hither' motion, giving Raptor the first move but the bot only stared at him, unmoving. 'Hide shrugged, rolled his head on his neck then lunged forward, with a fist cocked back. Raptor stayed unmoving until Ironhide was directly in front of him before quickly sidestepping the hurtling giant.

Ironhide stumbled to a stop before turning to face his opponent again. That move told him that Raptor was a defensive fighter. Or so he assumed. So the only logical way to land a hit would be to get in close, keep Raptors steps tight together. He walked towards the oddly-calm blue robot, fist in front of him. He knew he'd gotten close enough when Raptor started to step back, so Ironhide lunged forward, aiming for a right uppercut to the chest.

Somehow Raptor managed to sidestep again and, using 'Hide's mass and momentum against him, planted a single servo in the middle of his back and shoved, knocking Ironhide to the ground.

Ratchet could be heard chuckling on the side lines, seeing the big bad-aft Bot face-first on the ground, the new kid hovering over him.

Grumbling a few colorful Cybertronian curses, Ironhide got up, brushing dirt and grass from his plates. He began his slow walk toward Raptor again, knowing that it was the better tactic, but just needed a few minor adjustments. He cocked back his right fist again, leaning his left shoulder forward. As he once again got close, Raptor stepped back, 'Hide threw his right fist forward halfway, forcing Raptor to sidestep left. 'Hide snapped out his left servo, grabbed Raptors arm, and wrenched it down and forward, nearly knocking the blue bot down to one knee. 'Hide finally landed a blow into Raptors side, making the metal ring and clank. But before 'Hide could pull back for another hit, Raptor's leg swung out from behind 'Hide and knocked him off balance, toppling him backwards.

As he fell back, Raptor rammed his elbow into 'Hide's back, twisted his arm under, grabbed his other side, then wrenched back, throwing the falling Bot into a spin before he hit the ground.

Dirt plumed up around 'Hide when he hit the ground. But this time, Raptor didn't stay standing off to the side. He twisted back around and rushed his fallen enemy with an arm ready to strike. Just as he got above 'Hide, the downed Bot rammed his knee hard into Raptor's chest, effectively jarring a circuit or two and knocking him to the ground. 'Hide rolled away before standing up, now realizing that Raptor was not just a defensive player. But he was on the ground and 'Hide would not make the same mistake that Raptor had by rushing him near his legs.

He sprinted behind his head and was about to deal what would have been a finishing blow in a real fight when all of a sudden Raptor launched his legs up over his head, in a handstand for a split second, before locking his legs behind 'Hide's head, jettisoned himself up into the air with his arms, leaned back behind 'Hide, and effectively body slammed him into the ground.

Even after the dust settled, no one had made a move or a sound, including Ironhide. Finally, he rubbed his face with his servo, cursing and giving a loud snort, angry at having lost. He knew that in a real fight, after such a system-shocking move, Raptor would have finished his downed opponent on the spot.

Two points for Raptor.

Raptor moved to Ironhide's side and looked down at him with a straight face. He didn't smile or tease him for losing, for Raptor was actually very shaken. He realized how close the Autobot had been to defeating him. Had this been the real fight that was soon to come, Raptor may not have survived. Looking down at Ironhide, still trying to hide his fear, he simply said an unemotional "Good fight," before offering a servo to pull Ironhide to his pedes.

One chivalrous point for Raptor.

Before Hide was even standing fully upright, Raptor had locked optics with Bee. The yellow Bot made no move to dual with Raptor, especially after seeing him fight, and beat, Ironhide. Seeing the challenging glare from Raptor, and knowing how badly it would hurt Bee's pride to not fight but also to fight and lose, Ironhide quickly COM linked Bumblebee.

"_Fight him. I have a good idea of what his moves will be. I can help you through it to beat him."_

"_I do not wish to be flattened like a sparkling, Ironhide. He is intimidating and strong, I don't know if I could beat him."_

"_Would you be able to recharge every night knowing you never even tried? And how will Danielle look at you for backing down from a fight?"_ He knew Bee didn't like that statement, but 'Hide knew how to help him win, he just needed the kid's trust.

"_Just go in for it, trust me Bee. The fight won't last two minutes. Just keep your COM link open."_ Bee shot his friend a wary glare before stepping forward towards Raptor. On the sidelines standing next to Ratchet, Danielle looked worried. She had slowly been picking up on the jealousy battle between her two bots. She knew there wasn't much she could do to stop it, but she didn't want them to physically duke things out over her.

Ironhide now stood back in line with the rest of the Autobots. As Bee squared up against Raptor, Ironhide quietly hoped to himself that he was right.

With a last guarded glance at Ironhide, Bee rushed Raptor, throwing his shoulder forward in expectation of making contact. But just as he'd done to 'Hide, Raptor dodged and knocked him down to the ground. After getting up from being sprawled on the ground, _"You can reveal your master plan anytime now…"_ Bee's young voice didn't sound happy.

"_Run at him again. Just do it."_

So he did. But this time, Raptor didn't dodge the attack. Instead, he dropped his upperbody, leaned forward, and rammed his shoulder into the oncoming Bee, then flipped him up and over himself. Bee's metal body landed with a hard crunch, metal whining as he tried to move until Ironhide's voice interrupted him.

"_No! Wait! Stay down! I thought you could win by direct attacks but this will work better. Stay down and act like he seriously damaged you. If you want Danielle to think poorly of Raptor, make it look like he critically injured you on purpose."_

With that cue, Bee made clipped and broken whirring sounds, dimming his optics and letting his head roll to the side a few degrees. Raptor walked over and towered above him, offering a servo and a smirk of victory, but Bee didn't move. He just kept still and made pained noises.

"BEE! Oh Lord, no!" Danielle rushed over to him, standing by his head and laying a soft palm on his cheek plate. "Bee, please get up… Ratchet is he ok?" The deeply worried weight in her voice made Bee feel guilty. That is, until she turned to Raptor and lit into him for hurting Bee so badly.

"There was no need to be so cruel. It's one thing to humiliate someone, 'cause pride heals. But to intentionally hurt him to where he can't move? That's just low!" She was clearly upset with him.

Raptor looked like he'd just had his spark pulled out, chewed up, spit out, and then sloppily shoved back into his chest. He looked broken and embarrassed to say the least. And also angry. He knew he hadn't gravely hurt Bee as badly as he was playing it up to be.

Bee – 9, Raptor – 8.

Ratchet was studying the young Bot, obviously scanning and checking systems to be sure that they were all still functioning. The medical officer didn't seem satisfied and instructed that Bee be brought to the medical bay right away for further tests.

"_See kid? I told you it would work."_ Ironhide COMed to Bee as he and Mirage helped the limping Bot to the medical bay.

After such an eventful day, everyone retreated into the base hangar. Bee played up the pain the farther into the base they went, further infuriating Raptor and Danielle alike. Now the blue bot really wanted to give his enemy something to gripe about. And that day would come soon enough, he just had to wait for that sweet victory.

Once Bumblebee was settled on the medical berth in Ratchet's office, the tests began. Ratchet ran further scans to see where the young Bot was damaged but could not find a single data byte out of place.

"I don't understand Bumblebee. If he flattened you out on the ground like that, how is it that you do not have a single scratch on you?"

Bee rubbed the back of his and looked away. When Ratchet pressed him for an answer, he hung his head and explained Ironhide's plan and the jealous battle over Danielle. Ratchet sighed and shook his head.

"You can't make her like you by pretending to have been mortally wounded by your competitor. If she were to find out how deep of a lie this is, do you really believe that she would care more about you? Or would she turn and run back to an "honest" Raptor? No, no, I don't want you to answer me, it was a rhetorical question. Just process before you perform next time. I will let this slide only once, but I still have to tell Optimus what is going on. I won't make a scene about it tonight, but just tell everyone I gave you some special energon that fixed you up. Now, goodnight." He ushered Bumblebee out of the bay before returning to his serious work.

Bee returned to the main hangar in search of Danielle, so that she could know he was alright. He found only Ironhide chatting with Optimus. At Bee's searching gaze and questioning body language, Optimus informed him that Danielle was in Raptor's quarters. With this concerning news, he quickly returned to the main hallway, headed towards the "guest room" of the base. He knew he had found them when he heard Danielle's laugh trilling through the door.

Not even bothering to knock, he swung the door open wide to find Danielle sitting in the Raptor's truck cab. At the rude entrance, she startled and looked at him in astonishment. She stepped out of the truck cab, a question burning on her tongue. Raptor transformed and faced Bee, beginning to speak before he was even completely unfolded.

In a mock-sympathetic voice he asked Bee "Well aren't you out early? It is good to see you back to functionality again. Though I'm sure you need more recharge after such a hard battle."

Using various radio clips, Bee replied _"Yes, I do – but that is why – I came back! – for such a lovely young gal."_ Bee lowered his servo close to the floor and motioned for her to climb on. She didn't move.

"Now, now, Bum'lebee, you shouldn't take 'er with you. You need your rest after sustaining such injuries today." Sarcasm saturated his words. "She'd only keep ya awake. We don't want that, now do we Danielle? He needs his recharge."

Danielle looked back and forth between the bots, unnerved by the tense standoff. She wanted to be with Raptor now that she had him back finally, but she was so used to sleeping in Bee's quarters every night. She was torn, but Raptor's logic made sense.

Looking up at Bee with apologetic eyes, she slowly agreed with Raptor. "He's right Bee. I don't want to keep you up, you need your rest." She gave him a sad smile before taking a few steps back to stand beside Raptor's pede.

Angry but with no other civilized choice, Bee meekly nodded his head before walking out of the room brokenhearted. Ironhide's plan, while perfect on the battlefield, failed him on civil turf. It not only just failed him, it completely backfired.

Bee – 9, Raptor – 10.

He returned to his quarters and all but collapsed onto his berth. He laid down on his back and stared at the ceiling. Feeling more anger and pain bubbling up into his spark, he quickly offlined his optics and forced himself into recharge.

* * *

><p>Significantly enough time had elapsed since Danielle had stopped fidgeting, signaling to Raptor that she was asleep. Now he could finally contact and report to his master, Starscream, via private COM link.<p>

"_Master? I have my reports."_

"_Let us hear them then. Speak."_ came the hissing order of the Decepticon on the other end of the link.

"_The base here is quite large but mainly empty. The Autobot quarters are relatively close together but far from the main hangar. I have obtained the location of Optimus Prime's and the medical officer's quarters."_

"_Do you still remember the plan?"_

"_Yes sir, and it will be done as soon as the timing is right. One Autobot is causing some difficulties but he will be dealt with soon enough."_

Danielle stirred from sleep at that moment, woken by the soft humming of gears in Raptor's chest. He didn't notice her move her head slightly to look up at his face. A small blue light caught her attention. On the side of Raptor's head, just above his audio receptor, the blue light was flashing then dimming, lighting up and fading away at random, constantly fluctuating intervals.

After a few moments, she recognized the light as the same one that flickered under his hood all that time ago in the food market parking lot during the day that changed her life. What she didn't know was that it meant Raptor was communicating with an outside source. Not thinking much of the little light, she closed her eyes and went back to sleep.

After a tense lengthy discussion with Starscream, and the mounting unrest from almost losing the dual to Ironhide, Raptor came to his decision; He was going to abort the mission and leave with Danielle, make for a safe place and go into hiding. No one would ever harm her again. But he had to get out soon.

And soon meant _now_. He hated to wake his precious femme from sleep but he had no choice. Time was not on their side; they had to leave now if they were to get away without a fight.

He nudged her tiny form gently with a digit. She woke and looked up at him, rubbing an eye with the back of her hand.

"Wha…? What's going on? What time is it?" She looked around her in confusion, not recognizing the guest quarters in the absence of Bee's quarters.

"It is unsafe for us to stay here any longer. The Autobots are dangerous, we must leave right now."

"What? Slow down Raptor… They're not dangerous, I don't know what you're talking about. They've kept me safe all this time... Hell, they're been taking care of me. Why would you say such a-"

"I know what you are thinking but you are misguided. It is not safe, we must leave now." He scooped her up in a servo and headed for the door that lead out into the dark hallway. "We don't have much time."

* * *

><p>Bumblebee's sensors roused him from recharge due to sounds not normal to this time of night. He was up and moving instantly, stepping quickly and quietly towards the door.<p>

Entering the hallway, he heard light metallic clinking of metal pedes on the corridor floor. Following the sound, he broke around the corner just in time to see a flicker of a blue truck speeding out of the hangar entrance. He knew on the spot that it was Raptor. And he knew that he had Danielle.

Transforming, he raced towards the quickly fleeing truck. Even before his tires hit the pavement, his cannons were hot and holding a steady bead on Raptor.

"_Time to escape the clutches of a name,  
><em>_No this is not a game.  
><em>_I don't believe in fate but the bottom line, it's time to pay.  
><em>_You know you've got it coming._

_This. Is. war."_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Lyrics:<strong>_

_Hit Me With Your Best Shot _– Pat Benater

_Escape_ – 30 Seconds to Mars


	11. Justification, Enemies & Explinations

_0415 Hours:_

Inside Raptor's cab, Danielle tensed against the seat as every bump and turn on a strange dirt road took them farther away from the Autobot base. She didn't understand why Raptor all of a sudden thought the base was now unsafe, but she felt like she had to trust him. After all, he had protected her for this many years; who was she to doubt his intentions now?

"Where are we going?" she meekly whispered to the empty cabin. Only the steady rumble of the engine answered her. No matter what question she asked, Raptor refused to answer her. Even as the sky was lulled from dark blue to a morning-twilight violet, she grew more queasy and disquieted by the minute.

They traveled quietly for thirty or so miles, the engine sounds beginning to lull Danielle to sleep. However, a grinding shift in the gears and sudden hard acceleration brought her back to full consciousness in an instant. The tires spun harder on the dirt, almost sounding angry.

"Will you please tell me what's going on?" she half ordered, half pleaded.

"You will simply have to trust me Danielle. It is no longer safe. Just stay with me, no matter what happens." He finally answered back, his voice resounding through the cabin.

A sneaking suspicion forced her eyes to glance at the rearview mirror. Through the Raptor's own dust trail behind them she spotted a second cloud rising a mile back. Glimmers of yellow and black sparked through the airborne sediment. The vehicle was too far behind them for her to make out who it was at first, but as it quickly approached, she was able to squint through the weak morning light enough to make out the basic body shape.

"Bumblebee…?" she whispered hoarsely, her throat drying out around the words. Even as the truck sped up more, the Camaro continued to gain ground on them. Eventually he was close enough for her to see the cannons sticking from the roof over both sides of the car. She was stunned at the massive weaponry and couldn't keep Raptor's words from circling her mind in a fiery torrent of fear and confusion. _"__It is unsafe for us to stay… The Autobots are dangerous, we must leave."_

A flash in the rearview mirror nearly blinded Danielle, seconds before a blast landed just off their left side. A light plumb of white smoke trailed briefly from Bee's left cannon. She couldn't believe this. He was shooting at them… At _her!_

Raptor made a hard right turn off the road into thick shrubbery and dense grasses. She wasn't surprised that he could handle the rough terrain but she knew that the American muscle car was no match for off-road racing. Bee quickly fell behind, unable to swiftly navigate the many dips, rises, rocks, and shrubs in his path.

A few more shots rang out behind them before several blasts landed just a few feet behind and next to them.

Having lost most the ground he'd gained on the road, Bee transformed and kept firing at them, face mask already down. Raptor was able to swerve around the craters blasted in front of them but finally one was just too close and he took a nose dive. Danielle braced herself with her arms straight out against the dashboard. The front end of the truck came to an immediate and jarring stop as it crashed into the floor of the crater.

Bee's running footfalls vibrated through the ground as he approached. Danielle felt herself pushed out of Raptor's cab before he transformed above her, stepping out of the crater to face Bumblebee, cannons aimed and charging.

Hot metal whined from both bots, the only communication between the two, acknowledging the impending fight.

An enraged Bee fired first, the shot ringing just past Raptor's head. That was all the invitation Raptor needed. He lunged forward, cannon white-hot and steaming in the dewy morning. Bumblebee sidestepped the frontal attack, just as Raptor had done in the mock-battle less than twenty-four hours ago. As he moved, he fired a round that grazed Raptor's leg, knocking him off balance and halting the forward attack. Raptor fired two rounds at Bee who ducked and rolled away from them, only being singed on the arm by the close shots.

A terrified Danielle stood on the edge of the hot crater, screaming at the two to stop, but was totally ignored. As the morning sun gradually climbed higher into the sky, the two bots continued to fire upon each other, taking small but significant hits here and there.

Bee, however, was weakening. He knew it too. His enemy had a seemingly endless lineup of the new moves and attacks to throw at him, one after the other. The dual was wearing him out, slowing him down, and making him more vulnerable. He found it more and more difficult to evade the evermore powerful blasts; more difficult to get back up after each hit landed on his body. He knew he had to make a significant enough blow to finish the battle or he himself would be the only thing finished.

And the tear that rolled down Danielle's cheek was his only motivation to keep fighting, to land that fatal blow.

Getting up out of another hit, he pulled out a right uppercut into Raptor's chin, whipping his head back and giving Bee barely enough time to fire a direct round into his chest. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. He'd never personally offlined someone and didn't know if he could live with that.

Having lost the time to make a final blow, he threw a second hard punch into Raptor's chest, making the metal groan in a sickening cry of success. Raptor was thrown back, landing sprawled in the dust. Given just a few seconds to make another move, Bee ran for Danielle and managed to scoop her up before Raptor got back to his pedes and raised his cannons.

Danielle was shaking and yelling in his servo, almost as if she was trying to get away. He could feel the acidic flashback to when Ironhide had felled Raptor, throwing Danielle into a hysterical fit, jumping and rolling around in his servos, trying to get down.

Raptor's next charges screamed, ready to fire, before his optics landed on Bee's closed hand and the empty pit behind him. He knew that if he took out the Autobot, Danielle would almost certainly be lost as well. This may be his only chance to kill this Bot but it would have to wait. He just couldn't bring himself to risk the loss of her life.

As the dry land around them soaked up the warm morning light, the bots stood in a stalemate, glaring at each other, trying to judge the other's next move. Bee held his servo with Danielle in it against his chest, both protecting her and himself at the same time.

He slid a pede back slowly, watching Raptor for the slightest hint of attack movement. When the blue bot made no move except to lower his cannons almost imperceptibly, Bee knew it was almost safe to retreat with his femme. Taking a larger step back, he saw the defeat flicker through Raptor's frame and optics.

Still holding her to his chest, and never turning his back towards Raptor, Bee retreated all the way back to the dirt road. When the Raptor made no move from his position facing away from the road, Bee transformed and raced away with Danielle buckled in his passenger seat.

She sat rigid and cold, shaking in what Bee knew had to be fear. Fear of what exactly? He could not be certain. What he _was_ absolutely certain of was his totally fury and hated at Raptor for kidnapping Danielle, and at her for going with him without a fight.

There was no way for him to know what had transpired between them in the night to have lead to that but it almost didn't matter now. He had her safe and would soon have the rest of the Autobots up and armed to hunt down Raptor. As he nearly flew over the road back to base, he never said a word, though neither did Danielle.

Even if he could have spoken, he would not have known what to say. Even if he _had_ known what to say, he was too furious to speak to her.

The forty mile drive back to base was quiet, both from enemies and from explanations.

* * *

><p>Danielle was terrified. She felt like a ragdoll, being pulled apart by two kids. Both Raptor and Bee wanted her, but they both hated each other, so she knew there would be no sharing.<p>

With the battle still fresh in her mind, she almost found it easy to believe that the Autobots were dangerous, that Raptor was right, and that he had been trying to save her. But now she was stuck, again.

She didn't know where she was. Even if she did, she had nowhere to go. Besides, she wasn't about to jump out of the speeding Camaro. All she could do was sit and shiver against the seat, praying that Raptor would come back for her.

When she had ridden in Bee's cab before, it was pleasant, a real joy-ride. Now, however, the seats felt rigid, cold; the air conditioning was on but barely. The tires used to take every bump in the road with a small peppy jump. Now, every rut and dip were felt as if the vehicle had no shocks, making the ride feel more similar to an angry man stomping around instead of the youthful young glide that Danielle was used to.

* * *

><p><em><strong>0500 Hours:<strong>_

Not wanting interference in their dual, Bee had waited to contact the rest of the unit until after it was over. When the distressing news was first delivered, everyone was online and alert, prepared for a fight that never came. They had expected to end up outside to stop the two warring bots, but the call for aid was never issued. Now, all the Bots jostled around in the main hangar, waiting for their comrade's return.

When Mirage had received the news of Raptor running away with Bee's femme, his circuits were swarmed with panic. Even though he couldn't recall this ever being part of the plan, he felt like it must somehow have evolved into this event. Somehow, Raptor's leaving was a trap, but Mirage couldn't figure out how. Unless they were all to be offlined one at a time…

After several long and severely stressful minutes, Mirage decided on his plan of action. Using his cloaking program, he slipped quietly and invisibly out the back entrance of the hangar. He could only hope that no one would miss him too soon, especially Raptor. If the blue bot realized that he was gone, the situation could turn very hot very quickly.

Back inside the hangar with Optimus, Ironhide, and Ratchet, the Camaro's engine noise roared in before the car was within sight. Transforming just inside the entryway, he stood to face the unit, Danielle dumped on the ground at his pedes. His optics burned with such fierce anger that even Ironhide was somewhat worried about his own safety.  
>When Danielle finally got her bearings, she jumped up and ran, crying, back to the guest quarters.<p>

Through COM link, Bee fully explained what had happened, adding in that, beyond a doubt, Raptor would return for Danielle. By no means, however, was Bee about to let him take her again, and he asked for the support of his comrades on this. Of course, they all vowed to keep her safe and out of the Raptors clutches.

But Optimus was wary of Bee's fighting initiative. He wasn't convinced that this was a justified battle.

"Bumblebee, I know you care for her," he started, trying to find a middle ground between gentle and blunt, "but you cannot control who _she_ cares for. It is her choice, you cannot decide for her who she wishes to have as her guardian." He could tell his words were not going over very well, but it had to be said.

"If she does, in fact, prefer you for her guardian, than so be it. We will keep Raptor from taking her. However, you must remember that he has been protecting her for many years already. The bond between them is strong, so by all rights he is going to be defensive of her and threatened by you because you are trying to step between them."

Bee's frame became stiff, tense, maddened by his leader's words. He didn't want to hear that she might want that unscrupulous truck as a "guardian".

Ratchet spoke up also. "Just like us, humans make bonds with others, and they can become very strong. Her spark will choose what it wants to choose, there is nothing you can do to change that."

Bee wanted to shoot something. He couldn't process the fact that his comrades, his _leader,_ were turning their backs to him and siding with the enemy. He balled his servo into a fist, trying to hold back the frustration, when a heavy servo was laid on his shoulder. It was Ironhide.

"I am with the kid on this one. That punk is a menace. He tried to _take_ her right from us in the middle of the night. If that alone does not put a jolt in your security system, I don't know what would. He is sketchy, I never liked him from the beginning, and still don't, if not even more so now." He snorted gruffly. "So what if Raptor was her "guardian" for several years? He couldn't actually transform into anything remotely useful. I am unconvinced that he did any sort of actual protecting of her from anything. Bee has done more for her in the past two months than that scrap pile ever will. If he wants us to keep that slag away from the femme, then we should. If nothing else, it is safer for the human to be with us rather than that runaway bot."

Grateful for the unexpected support, Bee whirred slightly in thanks. Optimus and Ratchet, however, were not. To Ironhide Optimus spoke, "You will not act without orders. It is not your place to decide what will be done about this issue."  
>"The Primus I won't." he shot back bluntly. "If it means Bee's happiness and Raptors disposal, then I will act as soon as the opportunity arises. I will not wait for your orders on a matter like this."<p>

None of the Bots could believe their audios. Ironhide was usually the most loyal of all of them; he had never gone against Optimus' orders. If anything, he over-acted on them sometimes, as in taking out a whole parking garage just to offline one Decepticon that may have been in there.

Needless to say, Optimus was thrown off by the Autobot's defiance. He was about to put him in his place when Bumblebee, through his radio, spoke up.

_"Where is- Ferrari."_ he asked, registering Mirage's absence. They all looked at each other while Optimus attempted to establish a COM link with him. When he received no feedback, he tried to locate his GPS chip. It was offline, hidden. Mirage was running, hiding. They didn't know where, and they didn't know why.

As a leader, this day was going very badly for Optimus Prime.

* * *

><p>It had been almost an hour since Mirage had left the hangar and now he was driving down an unnamed, unregistered highway. He had felt the twinge of a COM link trying to open earlier but he'd blocked it. He knew that they knew that he was missing now. All he could do was run faster.<p>

The two lane highway he ran on was an old military road, closed off and virtually unused nowadays. Not that it normally mattered to him anyways, but now he could really open up his engine and let all 562 horses run wild on the empty pavement without having to worry about being chased by any human law enforcement.

With not much else to keep his processor occupied, his thoughts slipped back to the day he'd first heard the first inkling of the plan that was unfolding around him. He thought about the secret that was haunting him.

It dogged his processor every time he and his allies engaged the enemy. Even though he had known nothing of the truck that the Decepticon's had spoken of at the time, he was still worried back then. Now, he was terrified about when, not if, the plan would go into full swing.

But he couldn't tell Optimus or the others, for fear of them questioning his loyalty to the cause, having been at the Decepticon base, in Megatron's quarters.

He ran from the thought just as he ran from the base now. His tires were burning hot, his engine screaming at the over-abuse of red-line RPM running. However, there wasn't much of a choice now. He had to get to the place… He _had_ to get there if he wanted to survive.

And had to get there _soon._


	12. Black or White

As the hours pressed on into the day, Bumblebee refused to let his guard drop. Any sound that he was not absolutely sure of made him jump, resulting in his charging his cannons before going to immediately investigate the foreign noise.

Walking up and down the halls trying to gather various provisions for the day's work and possible war, Ratchet met the hot guns more than just once, and quickly became frustrated by the young Bot's paranoia. He was almost tempted to sedate Bee's circuits if he was not so sure that Raptor would return sooner or later. After the first few run-ins, however, he simply began to announce to Bee which direction he was coming from in the hallway.

In his own quarters, Optimus was angry and alarmed by his soldier's sudden and mysterious absence at such a high-alert time. He knew that Mirage was one to prefer avoiding a fight, but he had never expected him to desert them. Now, the Prime was tasked with attempting to gain a connection through the blocked COM and locator links.

Meanwhile, down the hall, Daniel sat on the berth in the guest room, formerly Raptor's room; alone, terrified, and silent. She couldn't go anywhere; the Autobot's would never let her leave. She couldn't talk to them; they more than likely would not listen to a little femme that had just tried to run away.

While another dark thought of how she may never escape singed through her mind, the door opened and Bumbebee walked in. She looked up at him as he closed the door before sitting down at the other end of the berth, as far on the edge as he could get.

His posture was tight, controlled. He made no sound or movement. As he watched her watch him, he briefly entertained the thought of approaching this issue using his hologram. However, he knew emotions would rule the context if it turned into a human face-to-human face situation; so he stayed in his mech form and thought over how to start this. He started with the first song that seemed to fit and went from there.

_ "Hey girl, you know you drive me crazy…"_

_ "This is not what I intended,  
>I always swore to you I'd never fall apart.<br>You always thought that I was stronger,  
>I may have failed, but I have loved you from the start…"<em>

A deep authoritarian voice came on the radio, like a president giving a speech:

"_But the situation has changed, and requires immediate action…"_

Static flared up before another song came on.

_ "I'm alive but I'm losing all my drive,  
><em>_'Cause everything we've been through,  
><em>_It's everything about you,  
><em>_Seems to be a lie, a countless twisted lie."_

White-noise filled the room as Bee paused in thought of what to say next. He hung his head, looking sad and vulnerable.

_ "Take my pain away,  
><em>_Tell me, tell me I was wrong,  
><em>_Tell me I was wrong."_

Daniel could see the damage and grief in his optics. She knew that she had completely broken his trust. What's more, she may have even broken his heart.

_ "With the pain you put me through,  
><em>_And now I know that.  
><em>_It's not me, it's you."_

She didn't' know that she'd wounded him this deeply, but his words stung just as much as her actions must have hurt him.

"Bee, please, I know what I did was wrong, but I…" he cut off her excuses with a stiff dismissive wave of his servo.

He knew he could never convey to her what he really felt without using real human language and sentences, but he was not going to run the emotional risks of using his hologram. He doubted that she would even understand his attachment to her anyways, even if he could properly convey it.

He didn't want to waste his time in this matter any longer though. He was tired of the goings-on, of being pulled back and forth between love and loathing. Of course he wanted to stay with her, to protect her always, but he was not so naïve as to expect the fight this morning to have won her back. He might be able to hold her body in his servo easily, but to hold her spark was an entirely different matter, one he was afraid he could not achieve.

Shaking his head to clear her attempt at an excuse from his processor, he opened his radio link again;

_ "You're hiding something, cause it's burning through your eyes  
><em>_I try to get it out, but all I hear from you are lies.  
><em>_And I can tell you're going through the motions,  
><em>_Figured you were acting out your part.  
><em>_Once again we're playing off emotion,  
><em>_Which one of us will burn until the end?"_

She stood and walked toward him on the berth, obviously about to try to explain, to apologize, but he was no longer going to listen. No longer would he let her force him through days of being happy with her to only have it turn around and burn his circuits from the inside-out.

Even as she opened her mouth to begin, he could see the shimmer in her eyes, tears threatening to spill. He knew that would break him down, he couldn't bear to see her hurt like this, even though it was exactly what she had put him through every other day.

Another voice came on, sounding like a preacher, deep, slow, and patient; _"You cannot walk on both sides of the road. You must choose one path, or the other. Walking on both is not an option. If you wish to stay with-"_

The voice switched out to another one, a lighter but obviously sad male's voice; _"-me, then you can. But it is so clear in your eyes that you love him, too. Please, tell me now and keep-"_

Yet another voice came on; _"You can't keep pulling back and forth. This is no longer a game for me. I am not asking you to change; I am asking you to choose."_

Bee looked directly down into her eyes, fearful of her answer, but he knew he needed to hear it. She looked up back up at him, the shimmer in her eyes becoming more lustrous as the moments passed.

"Bumblebee, please…" The worlds continued to explode within her mind: _I am not asking you to change; I am asking you to choose._ She could feel the pricking of tears overwhelming her, the sadness tightening her throat. "You know that I care about you. But I can't just give one up without the-" He interrupted her with whirring, shaking his head.

_"Choose. Black or white. Here or there. Me. Or him... Choose."_ A deep male's voice said through the radio before as Bee continued to hold contact with Daniel's eyes.

"Bee, you know I really do care about you, more than you know, even though I know I don't always show it…" She could feel her voice about to crack, but she fought it, swallowed down the feeling.

"Please, believe me. But I just can't turn away from Raptor too, he's always been there for me, just like you have, only…" She was rambling on with empty words, talking in circles, trying to find an easy way out of having to choose.

He knew she couldn't make a decision, so he would just have to make it for her. He stood up from the berth and faced the door, keeping his back towards her. He could feel her tearful stare burning into his back, trying to turn his metal body back around to face her. He wouldn't do that though.

He replayed the last sound bite he'd used; _"Me. Or him… Choose."_ The words and tone were the same yet, somehow, the sound was almost bitter.

"I _can't_ Bee, but please just-" she pleaded, the prickling behind her eyes betraying the oncoming tears.

_"No, I- Goodbye. If you cannot make it- It is my decision to be made."_ And with that, no matter how much he hated to, no matter how much the small sobs behind him pierced his spark, no matter how much he wanted to stay and pretend none of this had ever happened, he walked towards the door.

He pulled it open and, just before crossing the threshold, played one last song.

_"This doesn't change the way I feel about you or your place in my life (Please don't cry)."_

The door closed behind him at the end of the sentence, but he let the song continue to play. He simply stood in the hall, felling empty, broken. He could feel the lyrics in his spark, choking his circuits as he tried to hold back his own misery and mech-equivalent of tears.

_ "Can't you see I'm dying here,  
><em>_With a shot of broken heart that is chased with fear?"_

As he walked back to his quarters, he let the song run its course, though completely internal now. He'd turned his sensitive audio-receptors off because he could hear Daniel sobbing from all the way down the hall. He wanted so desperately to go back and comfort her, and knew that he would if he had continued to hear her. However, he also knew one of the other Bots would hear her soon enough and go to help her, _if_ she could be helped.

Raptor had sat out in the desert, plotting, for long enough. Action had to be taken soon if he was to have any surviving chance of completing his master's mission; Time could not be afforded to the Bots to allow them to create a battle plan.

He knew the Autobot's base very well now, and knew how, and _where_, to get in and out without anyone being aware of his presence. Not wanting to be seen, he remained off-road, easily navigating the rough terrain.

His processor was running swiftly and sharply. His body was responding quickly and correctly. His spark was raging against the loss of his ward. His guns were stocked and charged. The sulfur cannon was loaded and hungry.

He was ready to take on, and take out, the Autobots.

Raptor soon found himself on top of a dune crest, staring down at the back of the quiet Autobot base. He quickly ran through his line up of targets, a precisely and strategically calculated string of events that would turn in his favor if correctly executed.

First, he would have to make it down to the base, through the back door of the medical bay. In order to keep his chances of succeeding in a favorable ratio, it had to be made certain that no wounded could be repaired. This meant that the medical officer, who they called Ratchet, would have to be disposed of first.

He prepared multiple attack plans as he headed down the sand dune towards the base.

Hell was about to explode.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Lyrics:<em>**

_Face down_ – The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

_Goodbye_ – Secondhand Serenade

_It's Not Me, It's You_ – Skillet

_It's All Downhill From Here –_ A New Found Glory

_Angels Cry –_ The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus


	13. The Bug

After toying with the outer lock on the medical bay door, Raptor was able to gain access. Stepping inside, he shut the door softly as he listened and scanned the surrounding area for any sign of _anything_ that could give away his presence. The scans reported no cameras, bugs, or lifeforms, so he proceeded forward from the storage room into the operational room of the medical bay.

A cold, empty metal berth sat attached to the far wall. Next to it were several standing cabinets, drawers, counters, and tables, all white-wash and sterile.

He crept quietly along the wall, careful no to knock any of the trays or tools on the counter that would surely jingle at the slightest touch. Another scan set off a mild alarm in his security system. Ratchet was in the hallway, headed towards the front entrance of this room. Quickly retreating back into the storage room, Raptor waited for his prey to enter.

The steel grating of deadbolts was heard before Ratchet's metal pedesteps were heard inside the concrete room. The door closed again, and the locks slid back home. It was a bad move on the medical officer's part, but an aid to Raptor's plan.

The blue bot peaked around the corner, scanning the medical officer's weapons systems, finding them down and cold. Raptor could feel his own systems heating up, itching to fight and wreak havoc on the Autobots.

But he controlled himself. This mission could not be completed with haphazard violence. Rather, controlled savagery would be the golden ticket.

Ratchet sat down at his desk, facing away from the storage closet and his soon-to-be attacker. After several moments passed, allowing Ratchet to focus in on his work,

Raptor began to creep forward. Inching ever closer to the Bot, he silently concentrated heat around his guns and the cannon.

He was now within range. Raising a relatively small caliber weapon, he shot out the cables in Ratchet's neck that would have allowed him to speak.

The medical Bot jumped up immediately, grasping at his throat, mouth hanging open in what would have formed a yell of pain and surprise. He didn't know what had hit him, and before he had time to figure it out, a white-hot pain ravaged his circuits, exploding from his spine.

He reached down to clutch at his torn abdomen. Pulling his servo away, he looked down at it to see his own energon, green but with foreign orange and flaky-blue matter as well. He'd never seen anything like it in all his years of medical training.

_"What is this?_" was all he could think as his circuits blazed in pain.

Turning around, he faced his assailant, optics widening when he saw Raptor standing before him, weapon raised and hot. He tried to charge his own cannon, but before he could even transform it, Raptor fired another round into his chest, hitting him point-blank. The blow knocked his body to the floor, searing pain running through his body. His optics offlined as he fell into stasis lock.

Leaving the shattered and dying Bot on the floor like the filth he was, Raptor exited the medical bay into the main hall.

Simply for simplicity's sake, the Bot they called Mirage was the next target. Raptor went to the Ferrari's quarters but found them vacant. He ran a quick scan to try to track the Bot's location device, but found nothing. Even his COM frequency was down. This didn't bother him much, however, for the delicate Italian sports car would be easy to take down with one round.

Moving on, he had the small yellow Bot next on his list. He knew the Camaro could be a challenging fight, but he didn't have time to play games. One round in the back, perhaps one in the front just for good measure, would be enough to demolish him.

On his way to Bumblebee's quarters, a noise caught his audios, signaling that a heavy Autobot was headed his was. He assumed it was Ironhide.

A quiver of fear laced his processor, overriding his motivation to take out the yellow Bot. Slinking back to the medical bay, Raptor stepped inside and locked the door behind him. He passed the body without even blinking at it, headed towards the storage exit. Reaching the door, he hastily scanned the surroundings outside then opened it when he found no threats.

Figuring it unsafe to move through the corridor any longer, he decided to move around to the front end of the base and attempt to enter through the back entrance of the front hangar. Shifting through the dirt to the back of the hangar, he scanned inside and found no one. He opened the door and stepped through.

Momentarily distracted by the thought of just grabbing Danielle from the nearby guest quarters, he missed the sound of Optimus entering the hangar from the front entrance. Before he could even react to run or fire, the Prime saw him.

"Raptor, why are you here? How did you gain access to this base again?" Optimus was direct and suspicious, something similar to edging anger in his voice.

Before he responded to Optimus, Raptor raised his servos up in a non-defensive manner towards the leader.

"I ain't here to fight. I wanna' reach peace sir." His southern-boy accent made him sound innocent.

Obviously scanning him for signs of weapon heat, and finding none, Optimus motioned for Raptor to follow him outside. They both exited out the front entrance before turning to face each other.

Raptor had surged cooled air through his weapons hardware previous to reentering the hangar, allowing for him to get by any possible heat scans without raising suspicion. Now they both stood outside under the harsh desert sun. Hiding under the natural heat of the far-away star, Raptor was able to slowly recharge his cannon and guns.

"Why did you run with Danielle?" Optimus asked, his voice nearly neutral.

"I came here to join your unit in hopes of kickin' some Decepticon aft. I thought they had taken or, Lord forbid, killed my Danielle. I was out for revenge, so I came here runnin' on a tip from an ol'friend. It was a bonus to find Danielle here with ya'll, safe and sound. However, when your yellow soldier, Bumblebee, began to try to step in between Danielle and me, it seemed to spark a division between your ranks. I did not come here to divide this unit, but as the situations b'came worse, I felt unwelcome. I figured takin' my femme and runnin' was the best available option. If both o'us problems were gone, then the Autobot unit would fall back together again. But it didn't all go just as I 'ad planned it to go… I do not want to be in a war against you, or your unit, Optimus."

"If you are not here for war, then why did you return in secret?"

"Do you not believe that I was tryin' to avoid getting shot at? Ol'Ironhide back there scares the livin' lights outta me sir. Please, though, may I see her? I am concerned about her health. She ain't all right."

"What do you mean?" Optimus studied the bot, curious and now concerned about the human's wellbeing.

"She's had this condition ever since… well, for many years now she's had this rare genetic thing that prevents her brain from registerin' pain that is inflicted on her body. The human doctors call it _"congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis"_, or _CIPA_. That's why she's able to walk on that fractured ankle o'hers. Don't tell me you haven't noticed the purple and green grapefruit growing in her leg? That's not the point though. She took some hard hits today, I want to make sure that she is alright." Raptor put on his best innocent-little-boy look, loosening his posture and softening his faceplates.

"I understand your concern. She has not shown any signs of pain or injury, but now that you've told me about her condition, it makes sense. Alright, I will take you to her, just don't try anything this time." Optimus eyed Raptor carefully, scanning his weapons again and finding, but excusing, the heat they'd built up since coming outside.

"No sir, I won't try nothin', promise you that." he said, before thinking: _too bad promises don't mean a blasted thing to me._

The Prime turned around to head back into the hangar. His optics were no longer on Raptor, opening an opportunity to strike. He flooded a gun with heat while he charged the sulfur cannon. Just as Optimus was reaching to open the door, Raptor raised his arm while it transformed into the lethal appendage, ready to strike down the Prime just as he had taken down Ratchet.

Hearing the out-of-place grinding of metal, Optimus turned around just in time to see the hot cannon aimed at his back.

Sneering at the caught-off-guard Prime, Raptor hissed "You had a bug on your back,_ sir_." practically spitting the last word.

"The only bug here is you." Optimus ground out, angry at himself for trusting the foreigner.

Acting quickly, he knocked the cannon away and transformed his own arm into a cannon also. Raptor fired with his other arm and caught the leader in the side, nicking the plating and taking a significant chunk of metal with it.

They continued to dual, Raptor's guns getting hotter with every blast. He could feel his anger rising into a subdued rage as the Prime continually dodged his attacks. As the battle continued, his subdued rage built to full-blooded fury, the heat in his guns running through his entire body, filling his processor as his internal systems shifted.

The only sign of the inner change was in Raptor's optics. The bright blue orbs began to darken before swiftly changing to a deep violet and then growing into a torrid red.

Everything about him was functioning higher than any normal Cybertronian should have been able to handle. With Starscream's upgrades, however, Raptor was able to operate fully and efficiently at these levels.

Optimus finally came to the conclusion that Raptor, for whatever reason, was not here to only hurt him, he was here to offline him. He pulled out his energon sword and swung at Raptor, aiming for his arm in hopes of taking out his gun.

Raptor was quick; he dodged backwards before reaching out and grabbing Optimus' sword arm, wrenching it and twisting it behind Optimus' back, forcing Optimus to turn around or risk losing his arm and weapon.

With the sulfur cannon charged, he rammed the mouth of it into Optimus' back.

He pulled the trigger.

All at once, time seemed to stop. Before the sulfur round had even moved from its sitting position in the burning-hot barrel, Raptor felt burning metal eating into his side. Like a swarm of hornets attacking a soft-skinned human, he felt the deep stings biting into his plating.

The pain was enough to make him turn, just before the sulfur round exited the mouth of the cannon. It scraped across Optimus' back, firing just after it had cleared the main part of his body. The edge of the hollow point still made contact, crinkling a plate on his side, but the whole round remained mostly intact, retaining all of the sulfuric acid inside.

The hornets continued to sting his back and side, the pain finally onlining the rest of his receptors, allowing him to hear the explosions and gun fire behind him.

Turning to glare at the source of the sounds, Raptor finally spotted a small army of human soldiers crowded up and firing at him.

It was the NEST team pouring Sabot rounds into Raptor. Behind the team, to protect himself from the Cybertronian-metal piercing munitions, was Mirage.

* * *

><p>Back inside the base, Ironhide was walking to ask Ratchet about a few systems hiccups he'd been having when the metal screeching and cannon blats reached his audio receptors. He knew something was going down, and he wasn't about to miss it.<p>

Even while he ran back towards the main hangar, he COM linked Bumblebee and Ratchet to alert them of a possible attack underway in front of the main hangar.

In less than a minute, 'Hide was at the entrance, about to run outside, until the NEST team's dangerous Sabot rounds lit into the walls of the hangar, effectively locking him inside. Bee soon joined him, and they waited for a lull in the fire-fight, with Ironhide yelling at the walls to the NEST team to stop firing long enough for him and Bee to get out.

* * *

><p>Raptor was surprised by the tactical human technology, but furious at their power that made him miss what should have been a sure-fire kill shot. With Ironhide and Bumblebee just behind the door to this left, Optimus stumbling towards him on the right, Mirage in front of him and the NEST team in front of Mirage with effective weapons, he was absolutely enraged. He was done playing cat and mouse with them.<p>

No more games.

As Raptor gave himself up to the burning fury inside, he felt himself being pushed down by it, covered up and muffled. As he was pushed down, Starscream's programming came up, allowing Velociraptor to surface.

Super charging the sulfur cannon, concentrating any and all available heat toward the power lines of the weapon, he fired upon anything in front of him that moved.


	14. The Judgment

The NEST team had arrived and was keeping the unknown blue bot, but known-enemy, dancing between Sabot rounds. Mirage had sworn the Cybertronian wasn't a Decepticon, but the bot's glowing red optics suggested differently.

However, just two hours earlier, Major Lennox had been shuffling paperwork at his desk when a runner came to him, stating that his presence was urgently requested in the Autobot port. There had been no pre-set meeting with them for this day, but he ran to the hangar anyways.

There, he found a very panicked, and surprisingly filthy, Mirage. He knew Mirage was fastidious about his paint and polish, to say the least. For him to be so covered in dirt and not be fussing about it was a sure sign of very bad news.

After a brief entourage of Cybertronian and Italian curses, Mirage explained the situation quickly about Raptor and Bee's dual, Danielle being in the middle of it, and possible Decepticon interplay. He failed to tell about the sulfur cannon, because no one was to supposed to know that he knew, which if they did find out that he knew, and _how_ he knew, he would surely find himself on the wrong end of a cannon.

Knowing that it wasn't a false-alarm, Major Lennox rounded up his troops and they set out. They had to follow Mirage all the way back to base because, for safety reasons, the human government was not allowed to know where the Autobot base was stationed unless there was a dire emergency.

They had arrived just as what Lennox assumed was the bot Mirage had called Raptor was about to offline Optimus Prime. The NEST team was still approaching when Lennox had given the order to fire. Even though it was incredibly risky to open fire with an ally so obviously in the vicinity, it was a split second decision that Lennox figured was the right one; a few little sabot rounds were less lethal than a point-blank cannon blast to the spine.

Now, they sat on the front line, firing everything they had at Raptor now that Optimus had moved back from the target and was firing his own rounds.

Raptor suddenly lost it and fired round after round of unidentified ammunition into the NEST team and the surrounding area. When each cannon round struck, it exploded and gave off a white dust that thickened the air. The smell alone drove back the human soldiers. Lennox knew what sulfur smelled like, recognizing it from boot camp training on bioweapons. Through choked coughs and wheezes, he ordered his troops to fall back immediately, to clear the area no matter how far back they had to move.

He saw many of his cavalry men running on foot. Turning to look back for the reason they'd left their vehicles, he saw many of them disintegrating before his eyes. It was like a cancerous rust from hell was spreading over the steel and eating it into a flaking dust within just minutes. Whatever that Decepticon was armed with, it was extremely hungry for metal.

Back inside the hangar, Ironhide and Bumblebee were ready to burst out the front door. Hearing the halt in gun fire, Ironhide opened the door, only to shut it again quickly when he saw NEST falling back. They had never retreated as far as he knew, so whatever the white smoke that filled the yard was, it was harmful to humans.

Out on the base yard, waving his men to fall back, a wrong motion caught Lennox's eye. Amidst all the backwards motion, he saw one smaller figure rushing forward. Fully focusing on the abnormal movement, he saw a young woman rushing towards the Decepticon, but she had to fight her way around the retreating NEST team first.

Several of his soldiers grabbed for her as she ran by them, but she managed to slip through their hands or evade their grasp entirely. She looked up to spot Lennox staring at her and ran farther to the side of him as she approached. He ran towards her, hoping to intercept her before she got too close and got herself killed.

"Stop! Go the other way! Fall back!" he shouted at the girl between pants as he sprinted towards her. She ignored him and ran towards the dueling Cybertronians. He turned on his mic and yelled into it, contacting Mirage; "Who the hell is this crazy chick? Why is she here? _HOW_ is she here?"

Mirage replied "Who are you talking ab- Danielle! She is with us. She is the one I told you about. She was Raptors ward before she came to us; _she_ is why Raptor is here!"

He was finally nearing her as they ran. If the Decepticon had been her guardian, she was better off letting him be driven away or destroyed, whatever came first. She would end up dead or as a pet sooner or later if she stayed with the manic bot.

He spotted his chance to stop her and lunged, tackling her to the ground just a few feet behind one of the remaining military ATVs. She screamed and thrashed in his arms, but he wasn't about to let go.

"You don't know what you're doing!" he yelled at her. "That guy isn't one of us. You're human, he'll kill you! Stop struggling!" he warned her, his grip starting to lose its hold.

"No! I can't let this happen to him! I won't let them hurt him! He's my protector dammit!" Danielle yelled back at him. "Let go of me!" She fought against his arms, rolling around on the ground trying desperately to find purchase in the loose dirt. She managed to roll up to her knees in a crouching position, with Major Lennox bent over her, his chest pressed against her back and arms securing her own to her side by wrapping around her waist.

Her foot slid back in the dirt and hit the toe of his boot. His foot was planted solidly and this provided for a secure rock for her to push from, to gain leverage from. She pushed up and out with her legs, driving her upper body forward. As she pulled forward, his foot was pushed back, forcing him off balance. Danielle eased up then lunged forward with all she had and successfully broke free from the soldier's hold.

Lennox cursed out loud as he franticly grabbed for Danielle but she was already up and over the ATV they'd landed behind. She once again ran for the raging Decepticon and nothing more sat between her and it save for a short open stretch of bare earth.

Danielle found it hard to breath in the thick white smoke that hung in the air. The heavy concentration entering her lungs and bloodstream was making her dizzy, slowing her down. She stumbled forward until she was only ten feet from her beloved Raptor's pede.

She looked up at him and sucked in the deepest breath she could muster without coughing and yelled up to him.

"Stop! Raptor please! Why are you doing this? I'm ok! Everything is ok! Just stop!" She pleaded, praying that he could hear her.

He heard her, but it wasn't really him, so she wasn't recognized as really her. The Velociraptor programming was unfamiliar with Danielle, causing his security systems to only identify the close object as a human, and therefore a threat.

Pinpointing her location before even looking down, he finally saw her form a split second after his cannon had lowered, loaded, and locked on to her.

As she stared up the barrel of the cannon, her heart stopped. When her Raptor, or who she had _thought_ was her Raptor, looked down at her, she saw his face; his faceplates were down, sharp and dirty, scratched, covering everything except for his optics.

That's when she saw it: the soft clear-county-sky blue was gone. Instead, she saw only the bright scarlet orbs. Her blood froze.

By the time he barely subconsciously registered just who the little human was, he had already mentally pulled the trigger on the cannon, releasing a sulfur round down into the ground just feet from her. As soon as the round exploded, however, her face and form were gone from his sights.

As if being buried by his weapons and defense systems, he forgot what had just transpired and returned to firing at the Autobots and military vehicles. He was no longer Raptor, for the Velociraptor installed in his processor had taken over once more.

* * *

><p>The blast had thrown Danielle back fifty feet, but not after launching her limp body into the air like a rib-less ragdoll.<p>

When she landed, her shoulders and neck struck the ground first, sending what should have been a jarring stab of exploding, rippling pain up and down her spine. Her brain did not feel it, but it understood the trauma that had just transpired. Before she had stopped skidding along the ground, the white fog inside her mind had floated her up and away from the world into a waiting light.

As she drifted farther into it, the light grew broader, not brighter. Soon, it was everything in front of her, shining and shifting in the dense fog. Then the light began to shrink, falling back in on itself before finally stopping its movement as a rectangle of light in front of her. From that square, a shadow fell from it slowly, creeping downwards like wet paint pulled by gravity. It reached a point and then turned ninety degrees, spreading flat and towards her. It slowly shifted into a light green-gray color as it spread, tendrils of the shadow growing upwards at various points.

As the paint shadow grew, and the fog cleared, colors and textures were revealed and Danielle realized where she was. She found herself laying down on something soft and cottony; her old bed from her first home where she had lived with her parents. Spread around her, similar to how she had left it all those years ago, was her old bedroom. But something was different.

As she studied her surroundings, she saw her pillows on the floor, her bed sheets nearly ripped off the bed and hanging, mangled, over the side. Her desk chair was on its back on the floor, with various small knickknacks and other items from her desk scattered around it.

In a painful rush as her memories flooded back to her. She had been outside when a storm came. Jeramie had been there, was probably _still_ there. He had pulled her inside and then pushed her down. The couch, the floor, running away, being caught, forced back again. He'd forced himself inside her room and then violently stolen the only personal and cherished thing she had left to her name.

Tears balanced on the brim of her eyes, and she looked down in pain and shame for having let this happen, for letting him in both to her heart and her body. She hated him now for everything he had done and all that he had become. He was not the spunky little boy she'd grown up with. This wasn't the young man she'd thought she'd fall in love with.

She squeezed her eyes shut and bowed her head, feeling the fresh wash of guilt drown her. When she dared to open her eyes, to see that her surroundings were real, she saw the crumpled picture on the floor by her desk.

It was the only picture she had saved of her parents after they'd died. She stared at her father's face, smiling and proud. It began to shift and his lips uncurled, falling into the straight flat line of a corpse's grim mouth.

Suddenly Danielle was in a funeral parlor, sitting in the front row, with an arm wrapped around her weeping mother as the preacher asked God for a final sacrament. Her father lay dead from a stroke, still, and too cold and blue. She didn't want to remember him this way, so she looked away, back at her mother. Her mother continued to sob, choking on gulps of air, making her body shake with every shuddering breath.

Staring at her mother, the room began to change once again, the shadows from under the benches and the parlor growing like puddles, creeping out then climbing the walls and the people. Everything around Danielle was swallowed by the blackness.

Just when she started to feel as if she would never breath again, her mother's face appeared, pained and crying again. The image wavered again before she found herself completely quiet and still, expressionless. The blackness turned to white and objects of the hospital room came into focus, everything white.

The clocks had moved to six months later. Her mother laid in the gurney, the heart monitor coldly beeping the relay of her weak heartbeat. The doctors said that she was dying from a broken heart. The machine continued its dry melody before becoming quieter, with its notes fewer and increasingly farther between.

A nurse entered the room and checks the machine before rushing out and calling a code to the other nurses and presiding doctor. Danielle is ushered from the room by a gentle nurse, reassuring her that her mother would be just fine but that Danielle couldn't stay in the room.

Now she sat on a flat, bumpy waiting room chair, feeling a hot tear burning her eye before slipping from her tear duct and sliding down her cheek, coming to rest between her lips. An hour passed and she saw many people in scrubs running in and out of her mother's room in that time. Finally, the traffic entering slowed down before most, if not all, of them exited the room. The light blinked out in her mothers room before the door was closed by the doctor. A nurse began to walk towards Danielle.

The room shifted again, shadows growing exponentially and consuming the room once again. They slightly gave way to reveal another funeral parlor, only this time it was her mother sleeping in the casket. Jeramie was sitting next to Danielle, holding her close. She didn't cry, she just sat there and stared into space.

The shadows darkened once again. Now, the two young adults sat up against an old oak tree, Jeramie still with his arm around her. Clouds moved in, he held her close as they stood in the rain and kissed. He pinned her down on the couch and kissed her. She pushed him and he chased her.

The world began to blur and spin as she tried to push him off of her as he pushed her harder against her bed. She bit his lip when he tried to kiss her again, the acidic taste of blood filling her mouth. He slaped her hard across the face, yelling profanities at her. He shoves her down into the bed and she bounces back up. He forces her shoulders back down against the bed, daring her to move again, to just try. When she complies by staying still other than her trembling, his one hand slides slowly down her body to her pants and his other hand to his own.

The shadows crept up and licked the walls like black flames. Everything imploded into blackness before returning as a different room, her living room. After several hours of crying in her room, she finally forces herself to leave her room when tire screeches and a brief dark scream fill the air. She ran to front window and stares at her driveway; through waterfalls of tears, she takes in the gory sight.

Jeramie lay in the road, his body mangled and in some areas, severely and abnormally flat.

A police officer, suddenly there, continued to question her about what happened. She never said anything about the rape, just that she looked out her window at the sound of a crash to find her ex-boyfriend's body flat, bloody, and still.

The officer nodded and left. Now it was the next day and she was loading boxes of stuff into the old blue Raptor. As she sped down the road, away from the town, the truck tires cleaned themselves.

All four had blood and fragments of skin and bone stuck between the treads. By the time she reached the next state, the tires were no longer bloody or soiled, all evidence of the truck's actions against the terrible human boy erased from time.

As she continued to drive, the landscape became a single lane road stretching out in front of her, with nothing but dark flat land surrounding her on either side.

The sun had set but the landscape was not in the darkness of night. A white fog began to grow at the very edges of the horizon, building on itself slowly. The farther she drove, the more it closed in on the road. Soon, it was floating just off the edges of the road, threatening to pull her and her truck into it.

Her tires now stuck to the road. She could not move and the engine would not start. The fog pressed in on the windows, pushing its way in through the air vents and tiny gaps around the doors.

The truck sat in the middle of the road that was quickly dissolving. All of a sudden, the fog seemed to begin to scream, a high-pitched wail that came from everywhere and nowhere, both from the horizon and from directly inside Danielle at the same time.

The noise escalated as the white fog began to pulse like a heartbeat, slow at first but progressively faster. A wind within the fog twisted it, folding it within itself, a torrent of violent movements within the soft grayness. The fog that had entered the truck began to dissipate, quickly pulling back from inside the cab, rushing between the cracks with a low whistle.

The scream escalated, reaching an almost painful decibel before drawing back and away in one instant. As the fog violently retreated, Danielle felt herself pulled from the truck, now floating in empty space. As the fog continued away, she was pulled away with it, her body warped into different directions. As she expanded, noise flooded her mind and words, sounds, and gun fire became all she could perceive.

Suddenly she was flung violently downwards, her body propelled by no visible force. Then, without warning, she impacted on what felt like a solid slab of cement. The wind was knocked from her lungs but she felt air being pushed back into her through her mouth. Light rushed against her closed eyelids. She felt a rhythmic pounding on her chest so she snapped open her eyes.

A blaze of light assaulted her retinas, stinging her eye balls and pricking water from them.

A low panicked voice yelled out above her "She's back sir! Call the med-bus!"

Her head was spinning and pounding but she forced herself to sit up. What she quickly realized was a soldier kneeling next to her tried to gently push her shoulder back down, to keep her on her back.

The pressure drilled the well that brought back a geyser of memories from the dark places she had just revisited.

"Get off of me!" she screamed at the man and threw his hands away from her. Despite the turbulence in her head, and much to the medical soldier's surprise, she rolled over and took off at a sprinters run. He yelled for her to come back, that she would only further injure herself. She thought she heard the sound of boots running behind her, but she just kept going.

She saw a yellow blur stepping heavily from one side to the other, obviously dodging things that exploded in the dirt behind him. She stumbled as she ran towards him, pitching her forward and landing ungracefully on the ground.

From the corner of his optic, Bee saw and heard Danielle moving, and moving _towards_ him. When he looked, he saw her fall down. Ironhide took up Bee's request for cover fire as he ran to Danielle.

Reaching her in only a few steps, he kneeled down beside her, unsure of what to do or why he had even come over here in the middle of a fire-fight in the first place.

Danielle sat up from her place on the ground and looked up at Bee. He could see the reflection of himself in the mist that clouded her eyes. She could see the pain that was so clear in the way he knelt next to her and looked down at her.

"Bee…" she managed to croak. He leaned in closer while trying to stay out the line of fire. "I'm sorry..." she said between cached breaths. "I'm… so sorry for… hurting you. And in… the circumstances, I… hate to ask any…thing of you but… but there isn't any time…"

* * *

><p>Ironhide, Mirage, and Optimus continued to bombard the weakening Raptor. Ironhide finally made a direct hit over Raptor's spark chamber, knocking him off balance and out of his frenzied firing.<p>

Several more blasts from the three Autobots knocked him to his knees.

Raptor couldn't let this be the end, but knew he was on the wrong side the battle now. The finishing shots would be fired now and he would forever be a failure.

But no shots were fired. The black and red Bots stood, looking dumbfounded at the uneasy Prime. The Prime was looking past them, and Raptor followed his line of sight.

There, behind Ironhide and approaching the battlefield was the yellow Bot. On his shoulder sat a beaten and bloody Danielle.

* * *

><p>At Danielle's hasty request, Bee had COM linked all the Bots to stop firing, for there was one thing that had be done, and that one thing alone. Optimus, against his better judgment, granted the request.<p>

"Don't kill him," came Danielle's voice, too low and gruff to sound normal. "Not yet."


	15. The Messenger

Raptor moved to get up and continue firing but Ironhide and Optimus rushed in and restrained his arms, holding them wide, pointing the cannons away from all possible targets.

Raptor struggled against his captors, nearly loosing his hand from Ironhide's clutches. That was when Hide realized that he was having a difficult time gripping with his right servo. The metal had tiny flakes of blue peeling from it. It had been hit by the sulfuric acid, but he managed to hold on.

The medical officer that had used CPR on Danielle to bring her back didn't understand how she was even still conscious. The pain she should be in should have thrown her into shock at the very least. How she was still fully functional besides a slight limp was beyond all his years of schooling. He could only watch, agape, as she climbed up onto Bumblebee's servo and then onto his shoulder.

As the pair approached, not a sound was to be heard. Despite Raptor's having been restrained, the situation was still incredibly tense. As she stared at Raptor, or rather, the mech that _used to be_ Raptor, the blue bot stared right back into her.

To him, she spoke slowly. "After everything we've been though…" she started, thinking hard about her words before she said them. "…this is how it ends up? I cared for you. I can't believe that you were my guardian all these years." She paused and looked down at the ground, gripping the edge of Bee's shoulder plate tighter as the height sent a wave of vertigo rushing around her head.

"I trusted you with my life… And this… After you finally get the gift of _walking_ back from the Autobots… _This _is how you prove yourself thankful? _This_ is how you prove that you were _worthy_?" Raptor's optics began to dim at her harsh words, from red to a light purple, going on a dull blue. "I don't know what's wrong with you, but I won't let you hurt my comrades anymore."

He looked shocked by her words. "Comrades? You call these frags your comrades? Look at what they've done to me! What they've done to you! They've rewired you to hate me, to want nothing to do with me! Because of them, you'd want to kill me if you had the chance! How-"

"This is my chance," Danielle interrupted him, finding her point and wanting to make it before she lost the will and heart to do so. "And after what you've done, I won't pass it up." she proclaimed, with determination resounding in her voice but fear and pain cracking it at the end.

Danielle looked up at Bumblebee, angry tears beginning to shimmer in her eyes. He looked sideways at her, careful not to knock her off his shoulder.

Barely audible to any of the humans down below but very clear to Bee and the other bots, Danielle ground out, "I hate to ask this of you, but I think it may be the only right way for this to end... I would do it, but I physically can't…" She paused for a steadying breath. "But you… Not only can you, but I think it _should_ be you." A small tear fell from the corner of her eye and Bee knew exactly what she was asking of him. "I hurt you because of him. Your entire unit was hurt because of him." She looked up at him and pressed her fingertips into his metal, desperately wishing she could feel the pain. "You deserve the finishing shot."

The Autobots stood speechless at her statement, though it inspired a small spark of pride, and trust, in Ironhide.

Raptor stared in horrified disbelief at his femme. _How had he hurt her? He was trying to save her!_ He realized that Starscream was right. _Danielle was gone._ That thought circled his processor before consuming it entirely, the only thing he could think of. His Danielle was _dead_. He raised his facemask and simply stared at that femme on the evil Camaro's shoulder.

_"__Think before you answer. Are you sure?" _Bee played a quiet song fragment, optics searching her face for finality. She closed her eyes and nodded before looking at Raptor dead on.

The metal beneath Danielle grew warmer as Bee raised his right arm that was transforming into his cannon. The warmth grew as the cannon brightened. Tendrils of heat wisped up between the cracks of the cannon, shimmering in the air.

Looking down the length of the barrel, Raptor kneeled, demoralized but with his head up, optics locked with Danielle's eyes. She could feel her stomach twisting, her throat closing around a sob that was threatening to burst from her, muscles twitching in the stress. Her chest was more hollow than she'd ever felt before, and it almost… it almost… hurt.

She saw Bumblebee give her a last glance out the corner of her eye. _"Are you sure?" _he asked again.

This was it. It was now or never, and all in her hands. She gave one slow nod. Her head was swimming but she held onto consciousness with the determination of a thousand betrayed warriors.

She whispered low "Fire."

Time froze for a second before the cannon blast rocked the air, spilling heat back in her face and sending a white-hot shot of retribution directly into Raptor's chest. Metal twisted and rang as the round ate its way through the defeated truck's spark chamber. Bright blue flashed as his spark was hit, offlining him instantly. He fell limp in the two Autobot's arms. Slowly, they lowered his body down to the ground.

The entire NEST unit stood silent, shocked by the execution. The soldiers had fought beside the Autobots for close to two years, so they knew the capacity for justice and mortality their robot comrades wielded. However, they had never seen, or expected, such a formal killing from their normally peaceful allies.

Staring at the smoking metal corpse that lay on the ground in front of her, the sob that had been fighting its way up Danielle's throat finally clawed its way out. Her mind had finally had enough, and she simply broke down.

First she had lost her parents all those years ago. Then she lost her purity, stolen by the man who she then lost directly after the incident. She moved away and lost her childhood when she did so. She found a new home but then lost that. However, through it all, Raptor had always been there, Cybertronian or not. Now, she'd lost him too.

Seeing as fate had taken everything else from her that it could, she wanted to save it the trouble and give it her life as well. She had nothing left to loose, so what did it even matter anymore?

She stared down at ground, all the way up from her dizzying height on Bumblebee's shoulder. She could see just the tip of his pede, and she leaned forward, convincing herself that was the only reason she was leaning so far out. She felt her feet begin to inch forward, her sweating hands beginning to slide. The rest of Bee's pede was coming into view, slowly but surely.

Everything was gone now, she was all that was left. She was about to push off with her hands and lean all the way out when Bee's servo snapped up to her and caught her body, stopping her forward motion immediately.

She slipped forward into his servo and wrapped her arms around his thumb. How stupid was she being? Not everything was gone, she still had this Bot that cared about her, cared enough about her to _kill_ for her. She had almost thrown that all away…

She tried to grip his digit tighter but her left arm began to feel funny. There was a prickly sensation that spread down into her left leg as well, a wave of complete numbness following it as it swept down and across her body. Black dots swam in front of her eyes as her vision went blurry, her mouth running dry. She tried to sit up and squeeze her throbbing head but suddenly, everything went dead silent around her before she blacked out.

Bee shook his servo lightly, trying to wake Danielle up but she refused to move. A scan told him that she was no longer conscious, that her heart beat was dropping, and her breathing was slow and shallow. Rushing over to the NEST team, he made frantic whirrs and clicks at Major Lennox, who quickly ordered his medical unit to take the unconscious girl.

"I need that med-bus here now! Get the 0-2 liter on her stat! We can't lose her!" Lennox ordered over his team, ushering other soldiers, and Bumblebee, out of the way to allow the medical unit enough room.

Hoping for a faster way to move the girl, Optimus COMed Ratchet. When he received no response, he sent Ironhide to go search for him. Meanwhile, Bee could only look on helplessly as Danielle was roughly moved onto a bright orange stretcher and loaded into the back of the waiting medical hummer. He was afraid to let her out of his sights, yet still had the smallest nagging impulse at the back of his processor that still wondered if she even still wanted him around. Just as the officers were moving to close up the back of the vehicle, Ironhide returned, bearing the news that Ratchet was dead.

The hummer started up and began its hasty retreat back to the military base, where an emergency room was being stocked and prepared for immediate procedures. A last lingering image of Danielle lying so limp and helpless snapped an idea into Bee's processor. Without even bothering to ask his leader's permission first, he quickly transformed and tailed the hummer.

* * *

><p>After twenty minutes of rough and hurried driving back to the NEST base, the med-bus and Bumblebee arrive at the emergency entrance of the medical wing. The back of the hummer swung open and several officers quickly rushed the gurney out of the vehicle and through the sliding doors of the bay. They rolled a now partially-conscious Danielle into the emergency operations room. She was alert enough to see and hear what was going on around her, but not enough to comprehend what was happening.<p>

Unaware of her CIPA health condition, the medical staff began to prepare doses of anesthesia to put her under for the operations that had been deemed necessary. A minute after the first dose was administered, Danielle quickly began to fade.

Her body was finally going into shock; The stress had heightened it with high amounts of adrenalin, but the immediate and too strong dose of anesthesia put a clamp on her heart. Her pulse began to weaken then slow down as the rest of the dose took further effect. Alarms on the machines around her began to scream as she started to fade more quickly.

Even as the last tendrils of consciousness slipped away, fear kept its hold on Danielle's mind, afraid for her life as soldiers and doctors ran around her, shouting loud words that she couldn't decipher.

Suddenly, she felt a soft warm hand holding hers. She managed to look to her right to see a blue-eyed blond-haired young man standing next to her, his face stone solid, obviously trying to hold back the emotions threatening to burst from his glassy eyes. He stared into her darkening and closing eyes and squeezed her hand softly. She wanted to smile at him, to lie and tell him everything would be ok, to prevent him from being hurt again, but she hadn't an ounce of energy left.

Bee could only clench his jaw as he watched her eyes slip and her lashes float down to cover them almost completely, even though he wanted to ball his hands into fists and strike the cinderblock wall beside him until it was a powdery heap.

He griped her hand tighter as her eyes unfocused. A second later, the long monotone _"beeeeeeeeep" _of the heart monitor filled the room.

"We're losing her!" a nurse shouted. "Paddles!" Looking to Bee's hologram, the nurse said "You'll have to let go of her, the shock could stop your own heart, sir."  
>Without even looking away from Danielle's face, Bee replied "I will be ok, I am not human. Just ask Major Lennox, he will agree." Looking puzzled but not having the time to argue, the nurse shook her head and turned back to her patient. She roughly removed Danielle's shirt, which had just been cut open, and the paddles were placed on her chest.<p>

"Ready? Clear." One of the males nurses ordered and Danielle's body jerked up into the air. Bee's hologram flickered, dimmed, and became slightly transparent before it finally wavered back to full brightness.

"It wasn't enough." A calm woman's voice said. "Hit her again."

The same male from before said again "Charged. Ready? Clear." The electricity ran through her body, constricting all her muscles but failing to restart her quiet heart. Bee's hologram fell in and out of sight again, waves of static radiating across his body from the hand that held Danielle's. He could feel her spark dyeing, her entity slipping away as his scans acknowledged the nearly unidentifiable drops in her body temperature. She was losing this fight; the paddles were not powerful enough to bring her back.

"Again." the woman said.

"Charged. Ready?"

Bee made up his mind and closed his eyes, gritting his teeth together and focusing his entire being.

Outside the medical ward, in the red-dirt parking lot, the yellow Carmaro roared to life. The headlights turned on and engine sparked.

Back inside the surgery room, the hologram wavered before brightening, illuminating the room even more than the already-bright overhead lights did.

"Clear!"

As the electricity ran through the cord towards the paddles, the Camaro's engine began to scream, red lining as far as the needle would go in less than half a second. The hologram held on to Danielle's hand, as if he could hold her back from falling over the edge of mortality.

As the electricity surged from the cords to the metal plates on the paddles, the engine screamed even louder, black smoke pouring out of the tailpipes from the completely open pistons in the engine, igniting the flow of gasoline before it even entered the engine block.

The pain that ran through Bee's circuits was incredible. His processor attempted to shut him down, to stop the pain and extensive damage that was being inflicted, but he forcibly overrode the safety mechanism.

Bee's hologram continued to brighten, channeling the energy current from his engine into his present body and into Danielle's. He could feel the coursing pain incinerating his entire being from the inside out but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He was not sure if it would work, but he would not be able to live without her and know that he never even tried.

The electricity raced from the metal paddles into Danielle's chest as the energy from Bee flooded through her body as well. Every fiber in her body constricted, coiled, cramped, and closed as the massive current ignited her insides. Bee grew brighter as the Camaro screamed louder, forcing every last volt of energy he could muster through that current into his love. The hologram flared in intensity, shining so bright that his image was lost inside the white burning sun that now shone from his body.

Danielle's upper body lurched up from the gurney, the paddles the only thing keeping her from going too high. She fell back to the sheets and away from the paddles. As her body rested back down, the hologram began to glow less brightly, the white luminescence becoming a bright luster. But as the light dimmed from him, so did the hologram as a whole. The assistant nurses stared at the man that was quickly becoming see-through. Bee gave Danielle's hand one last soft squeeze before dropping to his knees at her bedside.

Outside, the Camaro's headlights dimmed, the engine choking before a deep and sudden small explosion erupted under the hood, throwing black clouds from the exhaust and smoke up between the seams of hood. The engine's scream rapidly fell to a rev before a second choking and metal-grinding-on-metal was heard.

Bee rested his head on the icy guard rail on the side of the bed. He gently moved Danielle's still-limp hand down to his lips and placed the lightest of a kiss on the back of it. He could only watch as his own hand became lost from sight against her darker skin.

The engine slowly became quieter, sounding much like an airplane's engines powering down after docking at a terminal. With several more pops and hisses that shook the frame, the car became quiet, and the headlights blinked out, becoming dead as the hologram on the emergency room floor disappeared altogether.

The personnel in the room stood motionless, waiting for the girl's heartbeat to come back. Seconds dragged by, the air alive with static tension. The male nurse began to rub the paddles again, recharging them for another hit, but a military doctor standing next to him gently laid his hand on the nurse's arm, shaking his head briefly. The machine next to Danielle continued its single-toned swan song.

Major Lennox, who had witnessed the whole ordeal, stood by the exit from the room. He could only stare at the young gray body lying in front of him. He wiped his hand over his face before letting it come to rest over his mouth. The quiet soldier closed his eyes and shook his head.

He could not stop the poison thought that ran through his head: _She shouldn't have died. I could have saved her…_

The head surgeon of the room began to quietly dismiss the extra nurses. Others simply walked through the procedures of cleaning up the room, putting away syringes, scalpels, clamps, and other various instruments that might have been needed to save Danielle.

Clearly not needed, Lennox walked away. He couldn't deal with staying there, staring at the dead young woman. Walking down the hall, forlorn, he couldn't help but to think of the girl, how he could have, _should have_, saved her.

He numbly treaded the quiet corridor, not making eye contact with anyone, not even soldiers from his unit. Without realizing it, he had come to the corridor exit. Through the little window in the door he could see Optimus Prime's mass standing next to Ironhide and Mirage. The news would have to be broken eventually, and he was the messenger that carried it.

The sharp afternoon sun stung his eyes as he stepped outside. Seeing now what had been blocked through the little door window, he realized that Optimus, Ironhide, and Mirage were standing around a charred Camaro, a haze of dark smoke floating up from under the hood.

Optimus gravely gave his lack of explanation; "We don't know what happened to him… We arrived here only to find him like this… And without Ratchet… there is nothing that…" he trailed off, not having the heart to finish the sentence.

Without looking up at his remaining comrades, Lennox delivered the message he'd brought with him.

"Then they're both gone… They couldn't save her. Her heart just… stopped…"

* * *

><p>Hope you liked this final chapter. Was it enough for you? How has it left you feeling? Where would you take things from here? Do you hate me…? I wouldn't blame you if you did but this is where I found the plot heading to, and I fancied the "clean-cut" ending. Even if it may not be so clean both figuratively and metaphorically speaking… But yea… Love you guys! Thanks for sticking with me through this whole gig, I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did.<p>

PS:

Ok ok don't kill me! I was only joking! This is _**not**_ the last chapter! However, things have come down to the wire as far as the plot goes, so chapter 16 or 17 will be the last chapter in this story. However, not before a twist or two more are thrown in. And who knows, a brand new plot may be born from this.


	16. Libramentum

The emergency room was empty save for Danielle's body and the head military surgeon. Most of the surgical instruments had been returned to their proper places and others were now being sterilized outside. Even though he did not know her, or how she had even ended up in the hands of the NEST team, the surgeon felt pity at the loss of such young blossoming life.

He lightly pinched the edge of the thin sheet of cloth at the end of the bed and gently pulled it up over her body, covering all of her, from her toes to her face. Now, at the head of the bed, he picked up the clipboard hanging on the wall behind her, checking his watch before writing "Time of Death: 15:42". After hanging up the clipboard, the surgeon turned to the heart monitor that still sang its single note. He pressed several buttons, beginning the shut down process, when, all of a sudden, the monotonous ringing pitch faltered.

A single sharp rise in tone bliped over the speaker. Astonished, he looked back at the girl's body, only to find it as still and cold and motionless as it had been for the past ten minutes. Another blimp emanated from the machine. He quickly backtracked to the computer's main screen.

He couldn't believe his eyes. The flat green line ran from one edge of the screen to the other still, but now it had two small sharp spikes scrolling along it.

He stared at the machine in disbelief. It beeped again, paused for two seconds, and then beeped once more.  
>Acting quickly, the head surgeon ran to the door and commanded out into the hallway "We almost have her back, get back in here and get moving; Keep her here!"<p>

The room was thrown back into a frenzy as nurses rushed back in, instruments returned to their places once again, and everything was prepared for use.

After three hectic minutes of scrambling to re-prep the room and stabilize her heart, the medical staff soon had the organ pumping at a slightly-slower-than-normal but miraculously steady rhythm. Procedures were began for surgeries to open her up and fix the multitude of severe injuries ranging from torn muscles to a shattered collarbone to a fractured vertebrate to a concussion.

After five grueling hours in surgery, the head surgeon was confident in the success of the procedures. Under the belief that all went as planned and everything ended soundly, the medical staff was finally able to close her up and let her sleep.

* * *

><p>While Danielle was in surgery, the top mechanics with the most extensive knowledge in Cybertronian mechanical engineering set to work on the scorched and seemingly dead Camaro. Despite being the most knowledgeable about transformer technology, what they knew was scant and nearly useless for what was needed in order to repair Bumblebee.<p>

What was worse was that the few who were capable with the technology were divided between two projects: one team trying to bring Bee back online and the other operating on Ironhide's hand that had been hit by a sulfur round.

Luckily for the weapons specialist, the sulfur had only nicked his servo and not exposed any energon lines. The mechanics quickly set to work removing any metal that had even the slightest hint of damage to it. Due to the sulfur's spread, however, this lead to the removal of all of the outer plating on Ironhide's servo, most of the plating on his lower arm, and a few plates from his upper arm.

The plates were submerged in tanks of a base acid that broke the metal down into basic particles of matter, forcing any sulfuric acid to rise to the surface of the liquid in the tank. Once the sulfur was removed, the metal particles were allowed to settle to the bottom of the tank. Eventually, the particles would be extracted and further processed before being melted and cast into the proper pieces needed to re-plate Ironhide's arm.

Unfortunately, things were not so cut-and-dry in Bumblebee's case. At this point, the mechanics had transported the Camaro into the Autobot bay where they had more proper tools readily available to them. Dozens of tests and inspections were run on the car, but many were reported as inconclusive because there was no way to turn the vehicle on to finish the tests.

Not knowing where else to start, and not having many other options, the mechanics begrudgingly began to take apart the outer components of the car. Starting with the soot-filled exhaust system, the pipes were removed, cleaned and replaced. Sections closer to the engine had to be entirely replaced because the heat from the engine had melted and eaten through areas and dangerously thinned out others.

Pulling off the hood, the men inspected the blackened engine. It looked similar enough to a factory-made V8 engine, but some things were in the wrong spot and others were missing entirely. With what they could, the team removed and replaced the battery that had fried and, from the looks of it, exploded. The cooling system was removed for the most part and a brand new system was installed. All the belts in the engine had to be scraped off of their respective fans and gears, for the heat had melted them to the metal. These too were replaced, along with some gears that had the melted rubber too engrained in them. With some help from Mirage, who proved to be extremely useful throughout the entire ordeal of rebuilding the engine, the mechanics were able to remove all the pistons from the engine block and replace them with new ones. Before the pistons were put back in, the inside of the combustion chamber was flushed with specially-designed cleaning fluids.

At the end of five hours, the Camaro was a fully functional car had it been simply a factory-built production model. The spark was not there though, and no amount of Cybertronian expertise could fix that.

Staring at the cold metal chasse, Ironhide's spark tightened in his chest. Bee had almost become something like a son to him, he couldn't just let the kid die after everything he'd done for Danielle. Despite the obvious risks, 'Hide decided on what had to be done.

"Optimus, I believe I have a way to save him, but we must work quickly in order for it to have any chance of working." Turning to Mirage he asked "Do you know how to find his spark chamber while he is in vehicle mode?"

The red Bot looked skeptical of where this could possibly be heading, but he nodded yes anyways.

Ironhide's voice grew lower. "Would you know how to open it?"

Mirage nodded again. "It would not be in anyway easy, but si signore, I could gain access to it. However, I could not promise that there would be no long-term damage afterwards."

Ironhide now spoke to his leader. "Optimus, it is of you, as a Prime, that I must ask this next favor. I believe we can bring Bumblebee back if we install a strong sliver of spark into his spark chamber. I am offering my own because there is no other reasonable option. Mirage is the only one here who knows Cybertronian anatomy for fixing them, and you are a Prime; You know how this operation has to be done."

"Ironhide… I understand that you wish to save our comrade but I will not risk losing another member of this unit. It is bad enough that we lost Ratchet, and now Bee… But should something go wrong in this, resulting in the loss of your spark also, we would stand no match against the Decepticons."

"We are already outmatched by them Optimus. One soldier less will not greatly affect the outcome of a serious battle. This needs to be done, risk or no risk. Besides, the kid risked his neck for us time and again, and then gave it all to save his femme. Do not tell me that doesn't count for anything, especially for efforts in trying to save him."

The steadfast determination of Ironhide's will was proving to be the game-changer in the decision of their next move. Optimus wanted to be able to save the young soldier, but the operation carried treacherous risks if any little thing went wrong. What was more, he had not performed this procedure in centuries. To say he was rusty in the skill was an understatement.

Mirage stepped towards the Camaro and opened the hood. Turning to look back at Optimus he said "Signore, Ironhide is right. We do have a good chance at saving Bumblebee, but we must act quickly if we hope to find any energon left running around his spark."

Looking between the soldiers that remained of his unit, Optimus could feel the loyalty of his men to each other. Bringing up old files in his processor that pertained to the spark-transfer, he ordered specific tools be brought to him and had Mirage find the spark chamber while two human mechanics worked to get Ironhide down into a temporary and controlled stasis.

* * *

><p>As the Autobots worked on their comrade, Danielle laid in a dark sterile room, asleep and recovering.<p>

Her mind, like a small orb of soft violet light, danced along the edge between the plateau of consciousness and the eternally sinking valley of complete darkness, the loss of existence called Limbo. She could feel herself, as an entity, being tugged back and forth, feeling, more than seeing, light spinning around and above her, but darkness pulling her down like an artificial gravity.

She had no thoughts, no memories; as consciousness stretched out infinitely to her left, it fell away dramatically on her right, her soul toeing the crumbling edge of it.

The scraggly edge stretched out in front of her, receding into darkness on the horizon. Curiosity made her want to lean just over the edge, to peer down into the darkness as it peered back into her. As she felt herself float over it, she felt the blackness reaching up to her like a warm hug, so soft, relaxing, comforting, easy to fall into and take a very long rest. She felt as if she'd dipped her toe into the very edge of a dark pool of water, tempted to step in and continue stepping.

A feeling rippled through her: the feeling that some menace lurked just below the surface, ready to strike and drag her down to the depths of the watery pit forever. She cringed back from the edge, afraid of what lay below, reaching up to her with open arms.

Safe above the plateau, she continued to drift along, swirls of yellow beginning to pulse gently around her as the medicine dripped quietly into her body's veins. She could feel a soft cool tide washing through her being as her body fell farther down into a dream state. The plateau began to sink, the darkness rising up like a swelling river, the current lapping at the edge, eroding it away.

As fear began to swim around her mind, her physical body in the hospital room reacted, her heart picking up its pace from the slow steady rhythm set by the machines and doctors. Alarms began to whine a warning to the nurses of the change in state of her heart. Fearing another stroke from overwork, a nurse promptly injected beta-blockers to slow down Danielle's heart rate.

The drug hit her brain, her heart began to slow again, ignoring Danielle's mind's wanting to panic and run as the blackness beneath her continued to rise like a liquid shadow falling in an opposite gravity. The solid plateau dissipated at the horizon and dissolved, quickly shrinking to just the area beneath her. The ground thinned, revealing the depths of the dark below her.

Then, the ground was gone. She quickly began to sink like a balloon with insufficient helium. The walls of shadow rose up around her, swallowing the light that shrank to a spec of light above her.

This was Limbo.

In the hospital room, a machine gave two irregular beeps, an early warning to an impending problem.

All around her was darkness. She felt herself trying to look deeper into it, but at the same time not wanting to look too hard. Everything was just black though, no floor, no walls, no ceiling; just empty space that neither started nor ended. She felt herself sinking, moving in a downwards direction even in the absence of direction in this space. The darkness began to press in from all around, like damp velvet filling the space, making it difficult to breath. She could feel her light dimming, the darkness threatening to snuff her out.

The machine monitoring Danielle's heart started an alarm of the now too-slow heart beat. Another machine monitoring her brain began to scream as the neural waves betrayed the onset of the comatose.

"What's going on?" a startled nurse burst into the room, running straight towards the machines to read their information on the situation. She quickly ran back to the door and yelled for more hands. Two more nurses entered and they all raced to catch Danielle before she slipped below the point of no return.

The darkness pressed in more, choking all feeling from Danielle. Suddenly, there was a second light in the empty space, a bright blue orb racing towards her. Wisps of ethereal smoke trailed from it as it moved. As it approached, the darkness receded, stopping the dying feeling.

* * *

><p>Back in the Autobot hangar, the human mechanics could only watch and learn as Mirage opened Bee's eerily dark spark chamber and Optimus scanned Ironhide's spark.<p>

The Prime spoke more for his own comfort than for anyone else; "This should go smoothly." He stepped closer to his dark weapons specialist, scalpel in his servo, ready to shave off a sliver. He opened the chamber and lowered the tool towards it.

* * *

><p>Danielle could feel herself growing warmer as the light circled her. It bounced and reeled around her, seeming either happy for, or disturbed by, her presence in the otherwise empty abyss. The blue light seemed familiar, like a long lost lover one can no longer recognize, but their touch is enough to bring back a stream of memories. Its light was comforting, its presence providing the security of a warrior to his dame, but Danielle couldn't bring put a name to "it".<p>

The nurses injected several small doses of some clear drugs in attempts to bring Danielle's mind back from the edge as her vitals fell further and her brain functions continued to drop drastically. The injections flooded her veins and raced to her brain.

* * *

><p>Optimus carefully peeled a sizable sliver of spark from Ironhide. Slowly, and with a special tong-like instrument, he picked up the now-free sliver and examined it to be sure that the size and strength would be enough before they tried to permanently fix it in the Camaro.<p>

* * *

><p>The nurses watched and waited, holding their breath as the only thing left for them to do now was wait for her to come back up, if she was ever going to. They waited and monitored her as the drugs ran deeper into her body and brain.<p>

The darkness around Danielle and the blue orb is getting thinner. The physics of it do not add up but the shift was perceptible. The downwards drop stopped and she sats still for a moment, the blue orb hovering in front of her. Then, she could feel herself being tugged upwards, back towards the light so far away, looking like a very distant star in a pitch-black night. As she began her ascent, the blue orb tried to follow but struggled to stay with her. It started to fall behind, opening the distance between them.

* * *

><p>Mirage gently grasped the tongs and lowered the sliver into the dark spark chamber, hoping to Primus this would not fail. The sliver sparked once or twice before settling into a weakly suspended position.<p>

* * *

><p>The neural monitor picked up the change in brain activity, relaying this information across its green screen. The heart monitor had yet to change.<p>

Continuing to rise and leave the blue orb behind, Danielle fought to stay down. The harder she resisted, the more tired she became, causing things to blur. Despite her lack of arms, she reached back towards the struggling blue orb, mentally pulling up on the entity even though it was wearing her down, making her own orb glow less brightly with the strain. Somehow though, she knew she couldn't just leave him there, whoever _he_ was. But she wanted to save him.

With great difficulty, they both clung to each other as the darkness seemed to scream in protest of the departing orbs, clutching at the tail of the blue orb. The white light above them grew closer and, as they neared, grew towards them faster. Soon, the light was all Danielle could see in front of her. The closer they drew to the light, the more electricity jumped between the two orbs, sparking and cracking like charged spheres.

* * *

><p>Mirage tried to close the spark chamber but it was locked in place. The plates refuse to budge despite the dripping energon that was slowly beginning to flow again throughout the chamber, spilling slightly from the open side.<p>

"Signore, I don't know what to do… It just won't close, and we cannot force it without risking serious damage. I don't know if this will work sir…" Mirage shrugged forlornly, setting down his tools and staring at the exposed spark sliver. "Maybe if we had only acted sooner…"

* * *

><p>The neural machine began to report hyper activity in the brain as the heart monitor began to report a slight rise in pulse also.<p>

The white light was now an expanse all around her and the blue orb. Danielle could feel herself expanding with it, filling the bright space. But the blue orb was expanding with her, meshing against her own entity like oil against water. The blue orb thinned out underneath her and raced for the farthest edges of the space, as if trying to get away. The space rippled as the blue stretched from the middle and ripped, opening a way for her to fall through and fill that area underneath him.

The heart machine spikes, following the unsteady and now-rapid pulses. A nurse nearly mutes the neural machine as it continues to scream, worrying the medical staff with the unexpectedly hard comeback of brain function in the girl.

The white space began to take on a solidified shift towards existence. The space began to _feel_ like a solid entity, an encapsulating organization. As the space closed down around her, she began to feel something akin to tingling in the outer corners, the tingling of tips of fingers, the twitching of a toe.

The blue entity was in the way though, filling the other half of the body, taking up the space. There was not enough room for the both of them, but Danielle knew not how to expel the extra spirit.

The space was now completely solidified around her, and she could feel the constriction in her chest, the needles in her arms and the face on her head. She hadn't realized until now that she had been dead. Her eyes snapped open, the empty whiteness being flushed away by bright yellowed artificial light. Before she could even think where she was or how she got there, her body went completely rigid in a small seizure.

Her chest tightened like an over-stressed balloon before a sudden burst of light erupted from within her whole body, growing and expanding before rising up and out of her completely.

The light blue radiance swirled and pulsed above Danielle's body before flashing and disappearing from the room. The nurses were stunned into silence by the unexplainable episode.

* * *

><p>Mirage was finishing the procedures to bring Ironhide back online when a burst of light filled the room. Turning, he watched in astonishment as the light swirled and pulsed before violently flying into the Camaro's spark chamber.<p>

The light hit it hard, causing sparks to fly out and electricity to arc along every part of the engine. The chamber plates slammed shut as gears and metal began to shift and slide. The hood slammed down by itself before the room went quiet, the car still and soundless once more. Mirage threw a weary glance at Optimus before his attention was torn back to the Camaro as it roared to life. The new engine screamed with pristine power, white smoke exploding from the fresh exhaust system. The back tires spun and squealed as the car's rear end fishtailed.

* * *

><p>Back in the hospital room, Danielle laid on the medical bed, cold, shaking, and gripping the bed rails with white knuckles as she gasped for air, her body shocked and extremely energized. The ceiling above her, the floor below her, and the walls around her reminded her that she is, in fact, alive. The events from the past few hours flood back into her mind in an angry torrent. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the painful memories, but an image stubbornly stuck in her mind, forcing her now-dizzy psyche back to the present. The orb; that strangely familiar spirit.<p>

Even though the darkness had felt like a dream, Danielle knew it had been real. Just as she knew the strange orb was real too. However, as the stars cleared from her eyes and her head stopped swimming, one thought struck her mind and jammed itself at the very front of it:

_Was that Bumblebee…?_

_Or... Raptor…?_

* * *

><p>So this time it is not a lie: This is the final chapter of Complicated Vows: This is War. I hope you enjoyed this ride just as much as I did. Please tell me what you think of everything, how it progressed from start to finish, how situationscharacters developed, anything/everything.

Thanks for all the dedicated and loyal readers out there! You are why I continue to write!


	17. Epilouge

The mechanics were running dozens of tests on the now-very-lively Camaro. The humans were in awe of how quickly the bot had snapped back into life. While they were checking and rechecking vital signs and systems, Optimus Prime was in another hangar of the bay, pressing Mirage for the details that he hadn't realized he'd even missed from many of the previous events.

Sitting on a giant block of metal made specifically to hold the weight of an Autobot, Optimus ran his questions past his comrade who stood in front of him, shifting from pede to pede, looking nervous like a spy who'd been caught fighting for the wrong team.

Optimus' deep voice echoed slightly in the large room. "Why did you bring the NEST team to our base? How did you know that their assistance would be needed?"

Mirage tried his best to remain collected, but he feared the severe disapproval that he knew was coming when his leader reached the heart of this.

Mirage slowly began to explain himself. However, unbeknownst to either of the Bots, two curious soldiers had managed to sneak just inside the doorway and were listening in on the conversation. They, like the rest of the NEST team, were itching to know just _how_ the Autobots had known to call them for backup when they did. But as they soon found out, only Mirage had known of the threat, and that fact made the whole story worth even more. The explanation went something like this:

_It was three months before the battle in Danielle's city. After a peculiar run in with the Decepticons, Mirage had cloaked himself and followed one back to its base. Sneaking in, Mirage scouted around and eventually found Megatron and Starscream discussing battle plans and war tactics._

_Just as Mirage was about to leave, feeling like what he was hearing would not help the Autobot cause in any way, the topic turned to an ongoing mission Starscream was on. The jet had been tracking the original Autobots that had fled to earth at the beginning of the war over Cybertron. Most had offlined on impact or been destroyed by Decepticon scouts. Only a handful had survived but there was one that Starscream had very recently taken a particular interest in. Having left the planet at such a very young age, and without his creators, it was astonishing to see that the bot had survived. What was strangest though was the earthen infection he'd seemed to have picked up. As it grew, the robot lost all ability to transform._

_Wanting authorization to further inspect the robot and its curious cancer, Starscream asked, and was granted, permission from Megatron. He figured that the infection would be similar to the effects of the rust weapon, but he wanted to know more. The two Decepticons then devised a strategy to lure the Autobots out into the open. The plan was to get the Bots into the city when the truck was driven there by its human instead of trying to snatch it out in the country, too close to the Autobot base. If the truck could be captured, the mission would be successful, and research and experiments would start immediately. Based on the knowledge of the infestation's destructive properties, they would also need an Autobot to test it out on. The yellow or silver one would be perfect for capture as they were smaller and younger than the others, easier to trap and take down._

_Once the trial tests were finished, with definitive results on how to turn the corruption into a weapon, they would attack the Autobot base._

_When Starscream made the mistake of asking for full leadership over the mission, Megatron blew up at him and a small fire fight broke out. That was Mirage's definitive signal to leave._

_From there on out, the secret about the impending Decepticon attack had been a haunting one. It had dogged Mirage's processor every time they engaged the enemy. Even though he had known nothing of the truck they had spoken of, he was still worried about when, not if, the plan would go into full swing. But he hadn't been able to tell Optimus or the others, he explained, for fear of them questioning his loyalty to the cause, having been at the Decepticon base in Megatron's quarters._

What shocked the human soldiers was Optimus' reaction. He had not ridiculed Mirage for spying, only for hiding such a dangerous secret and expecting his unit to distrust him for knowing it. The Prime agreed that the unissued mission to the Decepticon base was worrisome to him, but he trusted that it was made in good intentions, though maybe not entirely in good judgment.

At the end of their talk, Optimus rose and stretched his servo towards his loyal friend, meeting his optics and holding the gaze. Mirage was taken aback but infinitely grateful for the gesture of trust. He grabbed and held his leader's shake before letting go and saluting. Optimus put him at ease before continuing on to another subject as if the loyalty issue had never been brought up.

* * *

><p>As the two humans quickly and quietly retreated, one of the soldiers began ranting about how all the guys were going to freak when they heard the story. Flustered with his companion's lack of excitement and slow pace, he waved goodbye before jogging back towards the main quarters.<p>

As the man walked slowly out towards the exit of the base, he tried to keep a hold of his emotions. It was not that he was unenthusiastic; it was that he was raging in fury. He could not fathom how Mirage had managed to sneak onto the Decepticon base, though the Bot was known to sometimes use an invisibility cloak of some sort… He was a spy after all…

Seething and ready to shoot and incinerate anything that dared taunt him, he exited the hangar into the back area of the base, secluded and mostly unlit even though it was nearing dusk now.

A single car sat behind the building, the car itself spurring another wave of anger through the man's body. The little green frag wasn't worthy of the designation of "vehicle" but it was too late to be fixed now, at least not anytime soon.

As he approached the pathetic little Prius, the driver's side door popped open and he climbed in. He slammed his fists on the wheel just before the engine whined to life, the battery running the motor hardly making a sound.

The soldier threw the car in reverse, spun it around, and nailed the accelerator, his fury mounting the closer he got to the edge of the military base's property. He sped back through the hole in the fence that he had blasted earlier to get through the security.

As his newly-exchanged mini-off-road tires hit the dirt track that lead to the Decepticon base, the man flickered in image before he disappeared altogether. The little blue Prius raged down the road, the speed firmly putting the engine in full gasoline-burning mode.

Starscream couldn't believe he had been so stupid as to pick such a worthless piece of slag; almost anything might have been better than this…

He didn't have time to fume about that though. The Decepticons now had bigger problems, and Starscream himself was going to have his wings ripped off by Megatron for losing the truck, failing the mission entirely, and the cherry on top was going to be the realization of the lack of security of their base.

The jet ranted and raged within his tiny little hybrid frame, dreading the slagging he knew was about to drive into with his Lord...


	18. Coming Soon: Dawn of the New Soldier

Everything was running smoothly and going as planned. The Autobots had returned to their base and begun their own debriefing and repairing of damage caused by the battle. Optimus busied his unit with repairs and mild investigation works while he personally attended to his fallen comrade and old friend, Ratchet.

By the looks of the grisly scene, it was apparent that the medical Bot had never known the attack was coming. Shot in the back, a dirty and dishonorable tactic, Ratchet's spark chamber had essentially disintegrated in the heat from the blast, before the sulfur could even touch it. Now, after nearly twenty-four hours, Ratchet's chest was hardly recognizable, and the joints connecting his limbs had disconnected, releasing his arms and a leg.

Shaking his head, spark impossibly heavy with grief, Optimus carefully removed the disintegrating remains of his old friend. While it was not Cybertronian custom to have a burial or ceremony, Optimus knew the humans would want to say goodbye to their comrade.

The medical Bot's remains were swept into large bins and pans. Optimus could not help but to sigh at the thought that such a great hero was left as nothing more than a pile of sediment and scrap metal.

* * *

><p>Lennox sat in his west wing "office" doing work, recapping a report on the unexpected mission to the Autobot base. Everything was quiet, seeming as if life had fallen back to the normal routine at the NEST base.<p>

All of a sudden, the biological threat alarms began to blare throughout the north wing. Sirens across the base announced immediate lock down and quarantine of all buildings, red and white lights flashing as well.

Soldiers in the north wing fled the main hangar, where the origin of the attack was based. Many ran out into the open area outside of the buildings, others ducked into quarantine rooms and put on haz-mat suits. Gas masks were passed out in bulk to those not in the north wing.

Major Lennox was one of the first to have a gas mask on. Now, he was helping pass out more to the remaining units that still needed the life saving protection. Even though he was unaware of the threat, others knew all too well what was going on.

First, there was the explosion. A thick white smoke oozed through every crack and into every permeable surface. The reek of sulfur quickly spread throughout most of building, ending up permeating even the vacuum-sealed main computer data base rooms. With no idea what had happened other than an explosion then a powdery cloud, the NEST base went on high alert.

Once the north wing of the base was quarantined, all soldiers, no matter where they had been stationed, were hosed down and inspected by the base's doctors and nurses.

It wasn't until several days after the emergency that investigations could be started. Biological weapons specialists and bomb squads were suited up and sent into the north wing to search out the cause of the explosion and powder.

Do to the nature of the biological threat, the evident smell of sulfur that still clung to the walls and every surface, the E4 hangar was the first place inspected; this was where the Raptor's body was being stored.

When the team opened the door to the hangar, a cloud of thick smoke rushed out through it. The cloud left a fine white dust on the masks and suits of the soldiers, forcing them to wipe their masks before moving forward. Upon entering, visibility was low. Since most of the team had never been in the hangar before, they ran into things, like desks, cabinets, shelves and other furniture lining the walls, as the team spread out from the door.

A soldier flipped the switches to turn on the overhead lighting but, instead of light bursting forth and illuminating the hangar, several loud pops erupted from the empty light sockets as the electricity zapped and arced against what little wiring remained.

Another switch was thrown to open the shutters that covered large high windows. Grating noise echoed off the walls before the window panels burst into clouds of dust that slowly floated towards the floor.

The windows allowed the sunlight to filter into the room, igniting the smoke that hung in the air from ceiling to floor. The hangar was illuminated, the thick white cloud inside glowing from above and casting an eerie setting. Carefully trudging forward towards the center of the place, the soldiers discovered piles of gray dust on the floor.

One man whispered to another "I used to sit there and do work…" pointing to a disheveled dust pile with papers and remains of pens and other desk supplies mixed into it. "This stuff is eating the metal, anything metal. It doesn't make sense; it's like its some kind of super rust or something."

His listener only nodded, mulling over the situation and what his partner had said. A realization dawned on him.

"Hey, if this cloud is disintegrating metal into dust… Do you think that it could've… well… Wasn't that blue Decepticon being stored in here? He was made entirely of metal, wasn't he?"

The commanding officer of the team overheard this conversation and knew instantly that they were on to something. He rushed cautiously towards the body of the blue bot, only to find nothing but scorch marks on the floor, shadowing a thick layer of ash and dust.

The body was gone.

* * *

><p>News of the missing Cybertronian traveled quickly, reaching Major Lennox within the hour of the discovery. He couldn't fathom a substance that could eat through an entire bot like that, especially not in such a short amount of time. He did not have to wonder long, however, for the bio-weapon investigation team was quick to bring their final report to him.<p>

Upon research of the E4 hangar's previous room set up, as far as what had been placed where, blueprints showed that the bot's body had been in the center of the floor. Around him had been various canister, chambers, cartridges and charges that still remained after the firefight at the Autobot base. They were set out on tables and such to be studied.

What the report concluded to was as follows:

The chambers and charges that had been removed from the sulfur cannons were nowhere to be found, the only trace of their ever existing being white radial marks underneath where they had sat. The investigation concluded the detonations to have been a failsafe against the researching of Decepticon technology, and/or a kind of weapon in hopes that the body had remained on the Autobot base.

The powder and cloud were determined to be sulfuric acid, the very same type that had destroyed the ATV's and driven back the NEST team in the fight. Furthermore, any metal item that had been in the room had disintegrated.

* * *

><p>Danielle had been sitting in the hospital bed for several days, even through the biological weapon scare a few days ago. She, along with the handful of other patients in the medical wing, had been relocated to a room that was tightly sealed with a high-tech ventilation system. Now that the threat had passed, she'd been returned to her original room.<p>

Even though it had only been two days since the final battle that ended Raptors life, Danielle's wounds were healing remarkably quickly. The nurses had deemed her well-enough to be allowed to walk up and down the corridor once a day, just enough to keep her muscles from becoming too weak from bed rest.

For the first few time that she walks, a nurse walked by her side, keeping her steady and keeping her pleasant company. Eventually, she was told, she would be allowed to walk farther and longer, and soon, she would be allowed to walk on her own.

Everyday, as she walked down the corridor, IV drip stand rolling on her one side, the friendly nurse walking and talking on her other, Danielle would come across the only door in the hall that lead outside. In the middle of its upper portion, a window sat, revealing the desert that surrounded the base. Danielle wanted so badly to go outside, to feel the bright sun on her skin kissing her arms and caressing her cheeks with its warmth.

Today, as she walked once more with the nurse, those thoughts struck her hard. The bright yellow sun; it was yellow. The sun's kisses and caresses: a loving affection. The warmth, like the close body of loving man. All she could think about now was Bumblebee. The last time she saw him, he was standing over her as she lay dying, her heart failing her. He had cried, or so she thought; the memories of that part of the day were dark and she doubted that some of them were even real. She especially doubted the ones of him falling to his knees, weak and frail beside her bed.

Since that day, she had not seen Bee. There had been no word of him, even when she asked about him. She had brought up his name when Major Lennox had briefly visited her last night. He skated around the subject uneasily before quickly guiding the conversation to her health, again.

Tortured by the thoughts in her head, Danielle forgets to take part in the conversation she had been having with the nurse that walked with her. Coming back to reality, prodded by a light pinch on her arm from the concerned nurse, Danielle tries to shake off her queasiness and explain that she just isn't feeling well today. Gaining the nurses permission to return to her own room and rest for the remainder of the day, the helper hugs her before walking down the rest of the hall back to her desk.

Hanging her head, Danielle forlornly shuffled slowly back towards her room. Just before reaching it, she spotted the exit door that lead outside. She walked up to it and stood on her tip-toes to get the best view possible through the small window.

The sun shone brightly down onto the orange desert hills, washing all color from the sky except for the gray of the few wispy clouds that floated overhead. She wanted so badly to breathe fresh air again. Even though she had only been hospitalized for a very few days, she was feeling cramped and shut it.

Curious, she examined the door and the sign that was screwed to it; "Do Not Block Exit" it read.

_Well, if I went outside, it wouldn't really be breaking any rules. It doesn't say "_Do not open" she thought, mentally justifying the idea of taking a quick step outside. _I've been through a lot lately; a little sunshine or some angry nurses won't kill me._

Scanning the hallway quickly for any curious eyes, and finding none, Danielle took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

She half expected the screech of an alarm to give her away, but the only sound that rose was that of the light wind drifting across the desert and against the building.

Where she stood, she was on a small rectangle of raised concrete. In the two corners that did not connect with the building were two wooden posts supporting an overhead roof, shadowing just a little more ground than the concrete step covered. Sand stretched all around her, as far she could see from where she stood. Small dry bushes hunkered in the sun. About 100 feet in front of her there was a fence. It ran endlessly to either side of her, reaching well past the end of the base to her right. On the other side of the fence, blacktop road shimmered in the high afternoon sun. Invisible fire wavered above it, dancing and shimmering like a hellish vertical river.

As she stood there, an engine hummed off in the distance to her left. It drew closer to her by the second, the noise growing as it flew over the road. A dusty tail rose up in the distance, following a dark vehicle. Eventually, it reached where she was; it was a simple olive-drab military jeep, probably carrying a soldier back to base from some unknown origin.

A small part of Danielle had hoped that the vehicle would have been one of the Autobots, even Ironhide she would have enjoyed seeing. She felt so alone and disconnected from her friends. But she knew she would see them again sooner or later. Or at least she hoped so.

The jeep passed her quickly and disappeared in the shimmering heat above the blacktop, obscured into nothing but a dust cloud. The still-weak Danielle finally became acutely aware of just how hot it was outside, even in the shade of the overhead cover. Wiping the sweat from her brow, she took one final deep breath, savoring the humid air that filled her nose and lungs with the sandy desert smell. Mostly satisfied for now, she turned and quietly slunk back into the corridor. No nurses saw or heard her, thankfully, and she crept back to her room unnoticed.

For the rest of the evening, Danielle was left alone. Alone with her thoughts and memories; no matter how hard she tried, though, she could not remember the slightest clue as to what may have happened to her guardian.

She laid down in the hospital bed and turned out the overhead wall fluorescent. Falling back against the pillow, she tried desperately to recreate the scene of her last moments with him.

After several minutes of unsuccessful thinking, her mind eventually just wandered to "what if" situations. Most, if not all of them, ended with Bumblebee leaning down over the gurney rails and pressing his lips against hers. As she drifted off to sleep, all she could think about was his sweet face and strong arms, his warm body and adorable smile. Her lips tingled slightly, longing for his, but only finding the sterile hospital room air dryly kissing back instead.

* * *

><p>Back at the Autobot base, Optimus had asked for a meeting with NEST's top engineers and scientists, as well as Danielle's assigned doctor. They had complied and now sat with the great Prime leader in his quarters. Optimus spoke first.<p>

"I know that there is much going on at your headquarters, but for now it is simply clean up, as it is here. I called for this meeting because I have a request to make of all of you; a request for a large project that must start immediately. First, tell me this." He paused to study the humans that listened so curiously and intently for his question.

"How much do you know about building autonomous robotic organisms?"


End file.
